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911: To An Unknown God – This is an Emergency!
Acts 17:16-34
Richard A. Rhem
Fountain Street Church
Grand Rapids, Michigan
November 25, 2001
Prepared text of the spoken sermon
We hear repeatedly that September 11 has become one of those defining moments
in the history of the nation. Although there was the immediate shock and the
strong emotional reaction, that level of response cannot long be sustained.
Nonetheless, the trauma of that tragedy, the demonic dimension of its conception
and the brilliance of its execution remain with us. Reality has not changed but
our awareness has, awareness of our vulnerability and, one hopes, recognition
that there are some fundamental changes that must take place in this world of
ours.
In crisis times we flee to old securities – to patriotism, for example, the flag.
That’s certainly understandable. It is a symbol of what we cherish, of those
freedoms that have marked our national life, those values we hold dear. Yet, there
is also a show of nationalism which is simply tribalism on a large scale, a very
natural response as well – all too natural, for it reflects our animal nature – an
instinctual reaction which is exceedingly dangerous in a world like ours where
there lie in many quarters the capacity to destroy this spaceship we share.
But there is another old verity to which we flee with which I would deal this
morning – namely, piety: the flight to God for refuge and protection. The
churches were full for a week or two after the attack of September 11 but, of
course, people got over that in a hurry. Still, “In God we Trust” and “God bless
America” are blazoned across the landscape as we appeal to almighty God, the
Lord and sovereign of history, the one who guides and controls the course of
human history.
Once again, such a response is quite natural, understandable – it too is almost
instinctual, at least to the extent that the human creature, having evolved to the
point of consciousness, self-awareness, awareness of the other, has lived in the
face of Mystery.
© Grand Valley State University
�911: To an Unknown God: This is an Emergency!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Living in the face of Mystery is the context for the origins of religion. So far back
as we can trace the human story, there is the presence of the religious response to
the mystery of being human, being before the mystery of existence.
The great religious traditions of the world are those that began with a vision, an
experience, some founding story which found resonance in a community,
developed a cult, a form of worship and a way of life, a moral code. That is what
constitutes a religion:
A teaching, doctrine, dogma;
A mode of worship, of observance, a ritual;
A way of life, a moral code –
all of this creating a mode of adjustment to the mystery of existence.
And so we should not be surprised that post-911 there has been a flight to piety.
The realization of vulnerability often moves us to seek some shelter, some
security. This is as old as the human story.
It was true in the ancient world. When Paul came to Athens, he surveyed the city
and was distressed at the variety of temples and statues to a pantheon of gods
and goddesses. His Jewish tenet, his monotheistic faith, is summed up in the
Shema, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is one!” This passionate man was not only a Jew
who was convinced that God was one –Creator of all – but also that this God was
the God of Israel and, further, that this God had visited the human scene
embodied in Jesus of Nazareth. Soon we will celebrate Christmas, the Word made
flesh – the heart of Paul’s faith.
And Paul was nothing if not bold. He believed he was living on the edge of history
– the End was approaching. He was a preacher of the last times and he was
imploring all to recognize the true God and the revelation of that God in Jesus
Christ.
Athens, of course, was the greatest university city in the world, the city whose
Golden Age boasted the greatest philosophical traditions the world has ever
known. Even 500 years after its Golden Age, Athens was still a place of
philosophical conversation and debate. And so Paul was invited to tell his story
before the elite court of Athens.
He began by complimenting the Athenians on their quest. And then – here’s
audacity – he claimed to be proclaiming the Unknown God. Six hundred years
earlier, a plague had been experienced. A Cretan poet Epimenides devised a plan.
A flock of black and white sheep were let loose from the Areopagus. Wherever
they lay down, they were sacrificed to the nearest god. If a sheep lay down where
there was no shrine, it was sacrificed to the Unknown God.
© Grand Valley State University
�911: To an Unknown God: This is an Emergency!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
“To the Unknown God”– there too you see, the plague drew them to piety. Paul
takes this occasion to claim he knows this Unknown God who is God alone: God,
Creator, history’s Governor, and the one who is bringing it all to its
consummation. Some 600 years after Paul, another visionary received “the
Truth” dictated from Heaven – the Prophet Mohammed, with every bit the
conviction of Paul that he had the latest Word from the same God Paul
worshiped, only under a different name.
In the wake of 911, Andrew Sullivan in The New York Times Magazine had the
courage to raise a question about the religious dimension of the present crisis. He
writes:
…this surely is a religious war – but not of Islam versus Christianity and
Judaism. Rather, it is a war of fundamentalism against faiths of all kinds
that are at peace with freedom and modernity…
It seems almost as if there is something inherent in religious monotheism
that lends itself to this kind of terrorist temptation. And our bland
attempts to ignore this – to speak of this violence as if it did not have
religious roots – is some kind of denial. We don’t want to denigrate
religion as such, and so we deny that religion is at the heart of this. But we
would understand this conflict better, perhaps, if we first acknowledged
that religion is responsible in some way, and then figured out how and
why.
Andrew Sullivan, “This is a Religious War,” The New York Times Magazine,
October 7, 2001.
In The Economist some years ago I was struck by these words:
History is bound to be bloody when people, hardly understanding
themselves, claim to understand God perfectly and then meet people who
think the same only different.
But it is not just monotheism that is at fault for certainly that move from
polytheism was an advance in human understanding. If there is an ultimate, a
final principle, a Life force or Holy Spirit, then oneness is implied.
But is it not time to recognize that the Unknown God proclaimed by Paul is no
longer capable of holding us in thoughtful conviction? From all we know about
nature and historical development, certainly that a supernatural being “up there”
or “out there” is controlling the universe is no longer credible.
Let me cite three voices that represent three disciplines of human learning that, I
think, sum up concisely where we are:
© Grand Valley State University
�911: To an Unknown God: This is an Emergency!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
In a statement about what is going on in history, Jacques Monad, the Nobelwinning biologist, in his classic Chance and Necessity says, if he accepts this
negative message in its full significance,
“Man must at last wake out of his milleniary dreams and discover his total
solitude, his fundamental isolation. He must realize that, like a gypsy, he
lives in the boundary of an alien world, a world that is deaf to his music
and as indifferent to his hopes as it is to his suffering and to his crimes.”
And Erich Fromm writes in Man For Himself,
There is only one solution to his problem – to face the truth, to
acknowledge his fundamental aloneness in the universe, indifferent to his
fate, to recognize that there is no power transcending him which can solve
his problem for him.”
At his inaugural at Cambridge University, G. N. Clark wrote,
There is no secret and no plan in history to be discovered. I do not believe
that any future consummation could make sense of all the irrationalities of
preceding ages; if it could not explain them, still less could it justify them.”
In a world where religion provides the fuel for fanaticism and atrocities are
committed in the name of God, is it not time to recognize the old supernaturalism
is dead? There is no God out there shifting the gears, pulling the strings. No
supernatural revelation containing absolute truth formulated in dogma and creed
or sacred text.
That is probably the most difficult article of faith for the religious person –
Christian, Jewish or Muslim – to let go of God in control, omnipotent, almighty.
We so long for security; we so desire a Divine Parent and Protector. But can we
honestly observe our world without being aware of randomness and chance?
And what is the great temptation of the preacher? To offer a security he cannot
deliver. There are fundamentalist churches, conservative churches and liberal
churches – the whole spectrum – but all of them are still holding on to a Supreme
Being in control. They may make room for free will, etc., but finally one comes to
the Rubicon. One must decide: God outside of nature in control, or some sense of
the God present within the unfolding process, enlivening, creative, biased toward
life but not in control, only persuading by love.
That is quite another understanding. It calls for us to be mature, to grow up, to
recognize that the process has brought us to the place of responsibility.
Are we left bereft? Hardly so. Let me offer my own experience because it is still
relatively fresh although the result of a long process of years of thought and
reflection.
© Grand Valley State University
�911: To an Unknown God: This is an Emergency!
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Think of the wonder of the cosmic reality of which we are a part. Think of
life in all its variety, nature in all its fascinating dimensions: sunrise,
sunset, the seasons following in orderly fashion.
And being human, being here together, thinking together, recognizing our
responsibility and experience of community – love, joy, gentleness – the
fruit of the Spirit!
911 – after the rush to the God in control, perhaps we will recognize that that
conception of God has brought us to an emergency. Perhaps it is time to realize
Paul’s God needs an update. Not the God out there but God within, coming to
expression through the human in the ongoing cosmic dance, full of wonder.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
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Event
Pentecost XXV
Series
Response to 9-11Attacks
Scripture Text
Acts 17:16-34
Location
The location of the interview
Fountain Street Church, Grand Rapids
Dublin Core
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KII-01_RA-0-20011125
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2001-11-25
Title
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911: To An Unknown God - This is an Emergency!
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
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eng
Type
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Sound
Text
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on November 25, 2001 entitled "911: To An Unknown God - This is an Emergency!", as part of the series "Response to 9-11Attacks", on the occasion of Pentecost XXV, at Fountain Street Church, Grand Rapids. Scripture references: Acts 17:16-34.
Nature of God
Nature of Religion
Supernaturalism
-
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PDF Text
Text
A Simpler Way
From the series: Meeting God Again For the First Time
Text: John 4:23-24
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
October 5, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
The writer of the fourth Gospel tells us explicitly that he was very intentional in
the creation of the Gospel he wrote: John 20:30-31 - a portrait painted, a story
told, that you might believe that Jesus was the Messiah, thereby finding life
through his name.
This one, the author believed, came from God and was the embodiment in human
form of God’s being, purpose, and grace that, through God’s Spirit, possessed him
and filled him.
The God Who in the beginning breathed the creative process into being was now
breathing life in a new dimension in and through this one, Jesus - Jesus was
anointed with God’s Spirit. The Hebrew word for that anointing was Messiah; the
Greek word, Christ.
John was writing at a time of great turmoil, tension and ferment in the Jewish
community. The center of Israel’s life and worship - the symbol of God’s presence
in their midst – had been destroyed in 70 A.D. by the Roman occupying power.
How now would they maintain their peoplehood, their identity as God’s chosen
ones? The dominant group emerging was the Pharisaic party - to become the
group that eventually determined the Judaism of the future, the Rabbinic group
ensuring that Judaism would be a people of the Book, the sacred text.
But, in the last decades of the first century, the movement stemming from Jesus
was a viable contender. The followers of this crucified one whom his followers
experienced as living and present to them made up a significant segment of the
population. But they had reached out beyond the narrow confines of the Jewish
community; they had, in quite revolutionary fashion, formed a Jesus community
among the Samaritans with whom the Jews lived in great hostility and even
among the Gentiles - that is, with non-Jews.
At least in part, the fourth Gospel was written to root this outward reaching of the
very early movement in the understanding and ministry of Jesus himself.
© Grand Valley State University
�A Simpler Way
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
The reason is obvious:
There were strong differences in the Jesus movement that in its early stages was
exclusively Jewish. There were Jews who believed Jesus was the Messiah and the
End was near, the reign of God approaching, but who failed to see the reason for
reaching out beyond their own. And there were others - think of Stephen and of
Paul who felt the call to bring the story of God’s grace in Jesus to the nations.
In other words, there were advocates of a purely Jewish Jesus community and
there were advocates of a universal mission. I think that is the rationale by which
the Gospel writer chose the story of the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well who
was encountered by Jesus.
I will not retell the story; suffice it to say that Jesus chooses to go from Judea in
the south to Galilee in the north by the direct route which takes him through
Samaria, a hostile territory peopled by those the Jews considered alien, whose
worship the Jews considered false, even though the Samaritans stemming from
the ten Northern Tribes of Israel shared the Mosaic heritage, following the
Pentateuch, the first five books of the Hebrew Scripture.
It is in Samaria at the place of the ancient well of Jacob that Jesus engages a
Samaritan woman in conversation. He asks for a drink of water from the well,
only to offer her living water. The writer’s literary technique is to reveal the soul
thirst of this woman for the truth. The conversation issues in a question that
divided the Jews and Samaritans: the Samaritans claimed their Mt. Gerizim was
the place of true worship, pre-dating the establishment of Jerusalem later by
David, while the Jews, of course, contended it was at Jerusalem that God caused
the Holy Name, or the Presence, to dwell.
This allows the Gospel writer to put Jesus on the side of those who saw the
universal implications of Jesus’ ministry "Woman," he says, "the hour is coming and now is when you will worship
the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem ... The true
worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth."
Without attempting to give an in-depth explanation of that response, it must be
obvious on the surface that Jesus here points to a new situation and a new
manner of worship and devotion.
He does not say worship at Mt. Gerizim or Jerusalem had never been true
worship, or that God could not be worshiped at one place or the other.
He does, however, relativize the question of place which would represent the
whole apparatus of the cultic forms used in the worship of the respective
communities.
© Grand Valley State University
�A Simpler Way
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
We have come to a moment in the practice of religious worship, Jesus contends,
according to this account, when place and all the external accouterments that go
with it become matters of indifference.
The external forms of worship are intended to be and can be means by which,
through which, the human spirit comes into communion with the divine Spirit the liturgy, the ritual action, the very physical space designated for the worship of
God, can be vehicles of grace through which the communion with God is affected.
The setting and the manner of our worship is not a matter of indifference to be
tended to in a slovenly way. But they are the triggers only to bring us to
awareness of the Holy, of that transcendent source of our being by whose grace
we live and move and have our being.
It has been characteristic of Christian preaching to set Jesus and thus Christianity
off from Judaism as a spiritual religion over against a religion of outward
observance. This is a distortion and it misses the point.
Jesus was a Jew.
Jesus was not saying Judaism as a religion was being superseded, to be replaced
now by Christianity. Jesus was pointing to the nature of true worship and the
temptation of all religious worship to become an outward form lacking inward
transforming power.
The result of this encounter is not Christianity - Jewish - 1 and Samaritan
devotion - 0.
Worship that is inwardly aware of the gracious ground of our being is present in
many religious traditions. Formalism, devoid of Spirit, is to be found, as well, in
all forms of religious devotion, Christianity included.
But, that in no way detracts from the stunning breakthrough that Jesus
represented in his life and teaching. Jesus saw the temptation of the religious
institution to make itself exclusive and absolute and he broke through the false
barriers that purported to demarcate the only true way. Jesus saw the demonic
barriers that walled people off from one another, defining those who were in and
those who were out, the accepted ones and the rejected ones.
He conversed with a Samaritan. Jesus saw the oppression and domination of
women by men who considered women of a lesser subhuman class. In a society
where a man prayed daily thanking God he was not born a woman, Jesus
conversed with a woman, treating her with respect and dignity and human
decency.
Jesus saw the restrictive limitations of religious and cultural patterns and dared
to defy them, to shatter them and to declare by word and action a new day, a
© Grand Valley State University
�A Simpler Way
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
movement toward a fuller humanization of society. And Jesus did it not because
it was in the cultural air, but because he believed that is the way God intended it.
God is Spirit. God must be worshiped in spirit and in truth. Jesus refused to bow
to social custom or religious regulation when those violated the reality of the
Spirit.
Traditional definitions, conventional wisdom, social mores, cultural patterns - all
of that, for Jesus, needed constantly to be examined, reformed, transformed in
the light of the spiritual reality that comes from inward awareness and
attentiveness.
There are times of cultural crisis when old ways are challenged and foundations
crumble. We are in such a time; it has been a long time building - perhaps since
the 15th century, or certainly since the 18th. It is my contention that the church has
not yet faced the implications of the modern period. The structure of faith and
biblical understanding in which I was nurtured and trained and that has shaped
the Christian tradition, Protestant and Catholic, is largely the product of the postReformation, a 17th-century paradigm of biblical faith impacted very little by the
explosion of knowledge in the modern world.
The Christian tradition from which we stem still speaks in terms of an absolute
truth it claims to possess and an exclusive truth to which it must bring the world,
denying the salvific value of all other traditions.
I included a couple of paragraphs from Gordon Kaufman’s God, Mystery,
Diversity as an alternative to the absolutism and exclusivism claims of Christian
orthodoxy. I think what Kaufman is contending is very much in the spirit of what
Jesus said to the Samaritan woman The hour is come when the model can no longer be pronouncement of our
way as the only way. Rather, the time has come when the Spirit is calling
us to break down the barriers we have erected.
Is it not ironic that the one who threw down the exclusionary barriers that
divided people and defined the truth is, in the Christian church, made the
absolute revealer of God and the exclusive source of the grace of God?
The disciples returned from buying food to find Jesus in conversation with a
Samaritan, and a woman at that, but they dared not mention it. Instead, they
said, "Eat." But, Jesus wasn’t hungry any longer. The conversation triggered in
him the realization of the deep hunger in the hearts of humankind. He was a man
obsessed with his sense of calling to do God’s work.
"Look around you," he said. "Don’t you see the spiritual hunger ... see how the
fields are ripe for harvesting?"
© Grand Valley State University
�A Simpler Way
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Don’t you see it?
The mainline churches are limping badly and the world is spiritually starved. The
Promisekeepers have tapped into this spiritual hunger, but I don’t think the
answer lies in what is an attempt to return to yesterday with a strong dose of
emotion. The megachurches are flourishing, but there is no attempt to re-think
the faith in the modern world.
Jesus said neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem - old forms can’t bear the
weight of truth for our world. The old institutional alignments are dead - the old
orthodoxy cannot prevail.
But, God is God.
There is yet living water flowing to quench the thirst and satisfy the hunger of the
soul - if only we would let go, wait with openness and awareness to hear and
sense what the Spirit is saying to us. If only we would give up our certainties and
wait in the darkness, trusting that the living God will show us wonders of which
we’ve not yet dreamed.
Reference:
Gordon D. Kaufman. God, Mystery, Diversity: Christian Theology in a
Pluralistic World. Fortress Press, 1996.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c657977270b6d84ea29123f64fdadf45.mp3
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost XX
Series
Meeting God Again for the First Time
Scripture Text
John 4:23-24
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Gordon D. Kaufman. God, Mystery, Diversity: Christian Theology in a Pluralistic World, 1996
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19971005
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1997-10-05
Title
A name given to the resource
A Simpler Way
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 5, 1997 entitled "A Simpler Way", as part of the series "Meeting God Again for the First Time", on the occasion of Pentecost XX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: John 4:23-24.
Awareness
Follower of Jesus
Inclusive
Nature of Religion
Spirit
-
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206ce9e3f9177d7e4dccb6bfa35ace3c
PDF Text
Text
As One Without Authority
Article by
Richard A. Rhem
Minister of Preaching and Theological Inquiry
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Published in
Free Spirit
A Quarterly Publication of Fountain Street Church,
Grand Rapids, Michigan
Summer 2001
During a brief stint when I taught Homiletics, I gathered a number of books on
the art of preaching, one of which had a title which struck me and has always
remained with me - As One Without Authority. It was authored by Fred
Craddock, perhaps the premier professor of preaching in the country for over
three decades. The title registered so deeply with me because it was the most
concise and profound description of the preacher I had ever encountered. First
published in 1971, the book was Craddock's response to the “crisis of preaching”
which was being widely discussed at the time. Preaching had been receiving very
negative press, the whole discipline called in question, and there was
experimentation in alternatives to the traditional sermon.
In the wake of the tumultuous sixties and the challenge to all of society's
structures and institutions, including the church, there was serious doubt as to
the viability of the church in general and especially the sermon as an effective
instrument of communication in particular. Craddock addressed the issue head
on, acknowledging the legitimacy of much of the criticism of traditional
preaching, but affirming his continuing confidence in the place and power of the
spoken word.
But the only hope for preaching in the present historical context was for the
preacher to recognize that he or she was “as one without authority.” Of course,
this had been true since the rise of the Modern age, especially in the wake of the
Enlightenment, and classical Liberalism of the nineteenth century was an
attempt to accommodate the Christian faith tradition to the knowledge of the
modern world. The Liberal movement was a recognition of the loss of all forms of
authoritarianism - of tradition in Eastern orthodoxy, of the church in Roman
Catholicism, and the Bible in Protestantism. Still, in large measure, these
respective confessional traditions managed to ward off the acids of modernity
and operate as though the traditional sources of authority remained in place.
© Grand Valley State University
�As One Without Authority
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
That was my experience. Graduating from seminary in 1960 and assuming my
first pastorate in Spring Lake in the congregation I now serve (although after four
years I left for a period of seven years, returning in 1971), I came armed with “the
authoritative Word of God.” The Bible, inspired by the Holy Spirit, was inerrant
and infallible. The preacher's authority lay in the faithful exposition of the biblical
text. Even though serious biblical criticism had been around since the late
eighteenth century, it was not seriously engaged in the conservative evangelical
tradition.
But, after seven years of pastoral experience and preaching, I found my
authoritarian foundation crumbling. As I became aware of a critical approach to
scripture, it was no longer possible for me simply to assert, “The Bible says ....” I
had to begin again. I needed a new foundation if I were to continue in a preaching
ministry. A European pilgrimage that lasted for four years was not simply a quest
for an academic degree, but an existential quest for a religious faith I could
believe in with intellectual integrity and preach with authenticity. My search and
research were intensive - and the quest continues, but of this I became convinced
- there is no authoritarian claim that can ground authentic religious experience,
whether the claim be grounded in tradition, church or scripture. The witness to
religious experience - in my case, the witness of the preacher, is precisely that - it
is witness. One stands within a valued tradition, the tradition is embodied in a
community, and the community has a founding story which is the font of the
tradition. One may believe the founding vision or event was the revelation, the
manifestation, of the Sacred, of the Mystery that grounds Reality, but the
expression that gives witness to the vision or that relates the event is human
expression. All of the great religious traditions are human, imaginative constructs
issuing from the founding experience. Someone has written that all of our present
religions are the ossified remains of past prophetic and ecstatic visions.
This being the case, one who preaches does so as "one without authority" - one
witnesses to that of which one is convinced is good and true and beautiful in
order to challenge, inspire, encourage, and comfort those who constitute the
community. The preacher knows the tradition through long study and experience
and seeks to understand the wisdom and insight that have come to expression in
the tradition. And one must know one's own world, as well, having a sensitivity to
present human experience, an awareness of what is playing upon one's
contemporaries. Only then is one ready to address the community gathered in
worship hoping to hear some word that will illumine the human situation.
That word must come with authority, but without authoritarian claim. Dietrich
Bonhoeffer described the difference thus:
Someone can only speak to me with authority if a word from the deepest
knowledge of my humanity encounters me here and now in all my reality;
any other word is impotent. The word of the Church to the world must
therefore encounter the world in all its present reality from the deepest
© Grand Valley State University
�As One Without Authority
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
knowledge of the world, if it is to be authoritative. The Church must be
able to say the Word of God, the word of authority, here and now, in the
most concrete way possible, from knowledge of the situation.
One can see the distinction between authority and authoritarian claim in the
comment in the Gospel of Matthew at the conclusion of the Sermon on the
Mount:
Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were
astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and
not as their scribes.
The scribes represented the professional religious leadership, guardians of the
tradition, whose office had authority, who operated within the established
structures of an official religious institution. They made authoritarian claims, but
something about Jesus' teaching outside the authorized system carried its own
intrinsic authority - Jesus spoke to people and the word found resonance within
them because he touched the vital nerve of their present existence. He pierced
through to their soul; though he was one without authority, the integrity and
authenticity of his word carried weight.
Religion in general and Christianity in particular have been marked by
authoritarian claims and have sought to control the people. Dostoevsky has the
Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov rail at Jesus,
Thou didst desire man's free love, that he should follow thee freely,... there
are three powers, three powers alone, able to conquer and to hold captive
for ever the conscience of these impotent rebels for their happiness - those
forces are miracle, mystery and authority. Thou hast rejected all three and
hast set the example for doing so.
Authority in the sense of an authoritarian claim has marked much of the story of
the Church, but its day is past and, where it still exists and even seems to thrive, it
is the shrill last gasp of a dying enterprise. What is true for the preacher who is as
one without authority is true for all areas of religious leadership if we are seeking
a spiritual religious experience, or a religion of Spirit.
After some fifteen billion years this amazing cosmic drama on whose stage we
have appeared relatively so recently has seen the emergence of Spirit. Whether
one would speak of purpose and intentionality or prefer, rather, simply to stand
in awed awareness at the creative process and revel in the mystery and miracle of
the gift of life and of consciousness that enables one to contemplate the wonder of
it all and be grateful, the fact is we know of a spiritual dimension as part of our
human existence. And where there is Spirit, there is freedom. Where there is
Spirit, there is non-coercion. Where there is Spirit, there is no authoritarian
claim.
© Grand Valley State University
�As One Without Authority
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
For the preacher, for the religious leader, for the whole enterprise of the Spirit,
one must be as one without authority. In the Spirit, one bears witness to one's
truth and it will find resonance or not; one offers a vision or a dream and it is
embraced or not; to enforce one's word or demand adherence to one's plan can
occur only in the absence of the Spirit.
One will see it or not, understand it or not, offer allegiance or not. The Spirit's
word and way must be embraced freely, affirmation being elicited without threat
or coercion, for the Spirit has no power, is completely vulnerable - helpless unless
one sees and freely follows. The Spirit is as one without authority and all that is
spiritual is defenseless against contradiction.
Spirit needs form and too often form is the death of Spirit. The institutionalizing
of the Spirit in structures necessitates order and power and thus the dilemma and
the question whether a spiritual institution is possible. The greater the success in
terms of numbers, facilities, and staff, the greater the threat to the Spirit. The
larger the program, the greater the need for large budgets and administrative
oversight. Strategies for success seldom begin with the imperative to guard and
protect the fragile and vulnerable Spirit.
Yet, just as from matter has arisen Spirit embodied in the human, so the human
needs community as the embodiment of Spirit. There is no other way. But, let the
one who would address a word to such a community and one who would lead
such a community recognize that such a one will always be as one without
authority.
That strong and vibrant religious institutions are possible is without question.
History is replete with examples of dominating, controlling institutional religions
ascribing their prosperity and power to the blessing of God. Triumphalism and
arrogant assertion of divinely vested authoritarian rule have been ever present in
the annals of religious history. Whitehead, in his Process and Reality writes,
When the Western world accepted Christianity, Caesar conquered ... The
brief Galilean vision of humility flickered throughout the ages, uncertainly
... The Church gave unto God the attributes which belonged exclusively to
Caesar.
Speaking of the Galilean origin of Christianity, Whitehead claims,
It does not emphasize the ruling Caesar, or the ruthless morality, or the
unmoved mover. It dwells upon the tender elements in the world, which
slowly and in quietness operate by love; and it finds purpose in the present
immediacy of a Kingdom not of this world. Love neither rules, nor is it
unmoved; also it is a little oblivious as to morals. It does not look to the
future, for it finds its own reward in the immediate present. (pp. 519f)
© Grand Valley State University
�As One Without Authority
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Surveying the religious landscape, one wonders if the fragile flower of the Spirit
can survive, whether there will be eyes to see and ears to hear that truth that
comes to expression without authority.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
References
Fred Craddock. As One Without Authority, 1971, revised edition 2001. Alfred North Whitehead.Process and Reality (Gifford Lectures Delivered in Ediinburgh University1927-28), 1929, 2nd edition 1979.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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RA-4-20010705
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Title
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As One Without Authority
Publisher
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The Free Spirit Journal
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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eng
Description
An account of the resource
Article created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) entitled "As One Without Authority", it appeared in Free Spirit, Fountain Street Church, Summer 2001. Tags: Nature of Religion, Spirit, Freedom, Community of Faith. Scripture references: Fred Craddock. As One Without Authority, 1971, revised edition 2001. Alfred North Whitehead.Process and Reality (Gifford Lectures Delivered in Ediinburgh University1927-28), 1929, 2nd edition 1979.
Format
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application/pdf
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2001-07-05
Community of Faith
Freedom
Nature of Religion
Spirit
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8a4b57dc89fef0ef13311150131aa54d.mp3
3be59cb7e953c49a00c91aa1e464f3ea
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/260aca7a60c16bc29938caf6227ebdf6.pdf
cb0ca5e1c15186ac27ed8f145d640bed
PDF Text
Text
Conversion: From Religion to Grace
From the series: The One Covenant of Grace – The Salvation of the World
Text: Philippians 2:7
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
October 11,, 1987
Transcription of the spoken sermon
But whatever gain I had I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Philippians 2:7
God has determined from all eternity that He will save us, that He will redeem
the world. He made a pre-decision. He decided, not only to create, but also that
He would redeem, and we noted last week that that pre-decision is spoken of
sometimes in the scripture as predestination - simply the determination of God to
save, an eternal plan and purpose by which God will become the Saviour of the
world. And in the execution of that plan, within the course of human history, He
chose a special people, elected a people through whom to execute that plan and
purpose, and in binding Himself to that people specially chosen, He entered into
covenant relationship. And that covenant relationship with the people specially
chosen was in order, again, to execute His eternal plan and purpose, to send that
people specially chosen, bound to Him in covenant, to all the world to share good
news and to announce the grace and mercy of God for all people. That, in a
nutshell, is what the one story of the Bible is all about, and there's one covenant
of grace that is witnessed to throughout the whole of the scripture.
It is grace in the Old Testament where God called Abraham and bound Himself to
him. Abraham believed God and became the recipient of the grace of God.
Throughout the whole Old Testament it was a story of a special people, specially
graced. God bound Himself to the nation in the event of the Exodus and
reiterated the promise that He had spoken to Abraham, "I will be your God, you
will be my people." A special people in order that, through that people, all
families of the earth might be blessed and the light and the salvation of the
eternal God might be witnessed to in the midst of history. Jeremiah the prophet,
seeing the dismal results of that mission in the life of Israel and Judah, said,
Behold the days are coming when God will bind Himself in new covenant
and in that day it will not be a matter of external religion, but it will be
© Grand Valley State University
�Conversion: From Religion to Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
something of the heart, the law written within the heart when everyone
will know the Lord.
Jeremiah knew that the whole national scheme of things was falling into
shambles, but he also believed that the eternal plan and purpose of God would
not fail, that God would continue binding Himself to a people in order that,
through a people, there might be light for all people. The choice of a few on behalf
of the many. The choice, not simply to salvation, but to mission for the whole
world in order that the whole world might come to know that God is gracious,
that God is a Saviour.
Paul was a son of that old covenant, and the Judaism of that first century had
become a religion that had fallen into legalism and moralism as we know all too
well from the New Testament witness. And yet, there was still that zeal, that
determination and that dedication to God, which we see in the life of a Paul. Paul,
as he tells his own story, tells of a life before he met Jesus Christ that was full of
religion, that was full of pious practice, that was full of ritual rectitude, that was
full of legal morality, that was full of passion, seriousness, dedication and
commitment. But the paradox which Paul discovered was that his very religious
intensity was the means by which he was cutting himself off from experiencing
the love and the grace of God.
Paul, writing to the Church at Phillipi, is carrying on a controversy by those who
were disturbing those converts that he had brought to Jesus Christ. Those who
had come after him said, "Jesus, yes, but also Moses. Jesus, yes, but also the
ceremonies of the law, and all of the trappings of religion." Ritual purity, legal
rectitude, all of the embroiderment that so easily attaches itself to the
relationship of the person to God. Paul had cut through all of that. Paul had had
all of that cut through in the moment in which he was confronted by the Risen
and Ascended Lord Jesus Christ.
You know his story - On his way to throw into prison those who named the name
of Jesus, he was overcome with a brilliant light and heard the voice of Jesus. He
yielded himself to that voice, becoming the Apostle of Jesus Christ and the great
champion of the radical grace of God. Paul was one of the few figures in history
who understood the radicality of the grace of God. Paul was converted. Paul was
turned around in his tracks. Paul did a 180° twist. Paul's whole existence was
transformed in a moment, in the moment that he looked into the face of Jesus
Christ, and came to experience the grace - the grace of God in Jesus Christ, his
Lord.
This morning I want you to see that that one covenant of grace which is the one
story of the Bible, which is of cosmic scope and of eternal dimension, that
includes the new heaven and the new earth and all God's people, is nonetheless
just as individualizing and just as personal as your name. For it is one thing to
rejoice in the fact that God is a saviour, that God has determined to renew and to
redeem the world, that God has, from all eternity, loved and gives Himself in
© Grand Valley State University
�Conversion: From Religion to Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
love, binding Himself to the creation that He called into being. But finally, what
we all need to know is that we are loved, and that He knows our name.
The call to turn to God through Jesus Christ comes to us this morning, not as a
call to those beyond the bounds of the Church, not to the nonreligious, not to the
nonbeliever. We do that. We have a mission to the world. We do proclaim to
people everywhere the love and grace of God. But the interesting thing about the
call to conversion this morning as it comes to expression through Paul is that it is
the call to conversion to people who are religious, for whom religion has become
their security project by which they set themselves off from God.
That's the interesting thing about religion. Religion walks a narrow line. It can be
a blessing, or it can be a burden. It can be freeing and liberating, or it can be
binding and depressing. And I'm not sure but I suspect that religion has done
more damage in the world than it's done good, and I'm not sure, but I believe that
a person is better off with none of it than with a dose of a bad variety of it,
because religion can cramp the human spirit. Rather than liberate, it can oppress;
rather than inspire, it can dehumanize; it can make a person broken, cowering,
crushed. It can be the heaviest burden that one can ever be called upon to bear.
Paul understood that. He was deadly serious, deeply committed and passionately
involved in the practice of religion. And remember this, too, for Paul this was not
some kind of dark, degenerate paganism. Paul was a son of the covenant. Paul
lived in the light of the covenant of Israel; he lived in the light of the Torah; he
had all of the privilege that was accorded that special people to whom God had
specially bound Himself. When we speak of Paul, we're speaking of one who
served the true and living God, and what we have to see with Paul was that what
he needed was not to believe that there was a God rather than no God; what he
had to come to experience was not that he had to turn from his secular life and
begin to be serious about spiritual things. The interesting thing about Paul is that
he was all tied up in the true religion, in the religion of the true God, in the
revelation of the God to Israel. What he had to learn was that all of his religion
was his "self-project" by which he was securing himself, justifying himself,
seeking to validate himself over against God, to guarantee his life, to secure his
existence. That probably is the greatest temptation and the greatest peril to
religious people.
It's difficult to be the Church. It's difficult to be a society like we are, where
religion is practiced, where it has become institutionalized, where it has taken on
forms and structures, where it has developed a liturgy, a ritual life, a polity, a
form of government; where it has all of the trappings that any human institution
has. In such a situation where people are gathered together in the name of God in
the religious institution, there comes that subtle temptation to trust the
institution, to trust the practice, to trust the exercise of religion and to lose sight
of the fact that all of that is only so much scaffolding; all of that is so much
instrument or means for the end of coming to experience the grace of God.
© Grand Valley State University
�Conversion: From Religion to Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
Paul came to realize two very important things, which he shares with the congregation at Phillipi. He says that religion, first of all, or the grace of God, the
experience of salvation, is not a matter of status. If you want to talk credentials,
let me tell you my credentials, he says. He was an Israelite, so he belonged to that
special people who had been specially chosen, who had experienced the electing
love of God. More than that, he says, I was circumcised on the eighth day; I was
ritually proper. Once in a while I sense someone who gets very nervous about
being ritually pure. What if we do it this way, or what if we don't do it this way, or
what if this is not the process we follow, as though the rituals that we have
established have some kind of magic about them. What if the communion is
distributed by, God forbid, Deacons rather than Elders? Or if the bread should be
broken by an Elder rather than a Minister of the Word or, to be ridiculous, what if
the service were at 9 o'clock rather than 9:15?
And we may laugh, but religion has that terrifying power of binding people into
structures and forms that become absolutized and eternalized, and finally
become the things that are trusted, rather than recognizing that all of it could go.
All of it could go! We must simply rest in the grace of God, Who needs none of it!
And just the time we get so proper and so proud and so arrogant is the time that
the Spirit of God needs to shatter all of our forms. Paul was circumcised on the
eighth day; so what? His religion was burden, not a means of access to the smile
of God. The tribe of Benjamin - that's like saying the family of the Rockefellers,
the elite, something a little special. Paul says, No. To be in the grace of God is not
a matter of status.
But, neither is it a matter of achievement. If it were a matter of achievement,
would Paul have needed to find grace in the face of Jesus Christ? No, because
there wasn't much that God could do for Paul. He had achieved it all. Hebrew of
Hebrew-speaking parents. That means Jews of the dispersion living way off in
Tarsus but still speaking Hebrew. That's how serious was Paul's home about the
tradition. Still speaking Hebrew. As to the Law, a Pharisee. There were never
more than 6,000 of them. There were never many rough and ready religious
souls to be able to keep the discipline of the Pharisee. The Pharisee gets bad press
in the New Testament and we don't like them very well, but they were serious
people. They were the cream of the crop. Not many of us here in Christ
Community would qualify, a funny church such as we are! We take anybody. Not
many Pharisees could come out of a bunch like you. As to zeal, persecuting the
Church. No "live and let live" with Paul. No nonchalance. No easy tolerance. Paul
went to haul into prison those who dared to name the name of Jesus whom the
likes of Paul had crucified because Jesus put in peril their religion by which they
were justifying themselves. And he says as far as the Law is concerned, blameless.
Human achievement! Paul was no piker, but he wraps it all up in one little
package and tosses it on the dung hill, literally. Translate it more colloquially for
yourselves. That's what it was worth as a means of finding peace with God.
© Grand Valley State University
�Conversion: From Religion to Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
A person whose religion is a matter of ought, heavy ought, duty, obligation,
onerous grinding out that which has to be done, all the time creating hostility
within and repressed anger that can never come out to God and so comes out in
ugliness to everybody else - all of that, Paul says, is to no avail. "One day I met
Jesus." Paul wasn't converted from darkness to light, from unbelief to belief, from
nonreligion to religion. Paul was converted from religion to grace, to the grace of
God Who says, "How come you're bustin' your buns, Buddy? I've always loved
you. Why don't you relax and let me put my arms around you? And then,
incidentally, tell the story."
"I considered all of that rubbish for the sake of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,"
says Paul. His whole existence transformed. His life changed. Paul converted,
realizing what God intended in the first place with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob
and Israel. And what had happened in Israel happened in the Church over and
over again so that a voice like Paul's arises just once in a while and for not very
long because the cry of radical grace does not build strong institutions where
people are sheep and the religious leaders hold the spigot of grace. Once in a
while, through the sham and the ceremony of religious pride and arrogance, a
voice is raised, crying, "Radical grace!" and then again the saving God Who
revealed Himself in the face of Jesus breaks through and says to people, "Relax. I
love you. And there's nothing you can do about it."
Amen.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost XIX
Series
One Covenant of Grace - the Salvation of the World
Scripture Text
Philippians 3:7
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01_RA-0-19871011
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1987-10-11
Title
A name given to the resource
Conversion From Religion to Grace
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 11, 1987 entitled "Conversion From Religion to Grace", as part of the series "One Covenant of Grace - the Salvation of the World", on the occasion of Pentecost XIX, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Philippians 3:7.
Covenant of
Grace
Hebrew Scriptures
Nature of Religion
Prophets
Salvation of all
Universal Grace
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Do I Need Religion?
From the series: Can I Honestly Believe?
Text: Psalm 8:1; Psalm 42:2; Acts 17:22
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
July 12, 1998
Transcription of the spoken sermon
I announced a summer series in a recent Courier entitled With Heart and Mind
United. I cited a sermon from 1984 with that theme. In that sermon, I pointed
back to my return to this congregation in 1971 when we determined to be a
congregation marked by intellectual integrity and evangelical passion. We have
been on such an adventure of faith now for over twenty-seven years. When I
determined the series theme for this summer, it was not a case of conscious
recycling; rather, it was a determination to do once again what we have been
engaged in over all these years - to understand the faith we profess and live, to
bring our experience of God, of the sacred, the Holy, into connection with the
whole reality of our human experience. Working over that theme, I have named
the series Can I Honestly Believe? By that I mean, can I as a person at the end of
the twentieth century, aware of the universe of which I am a part, still believe in
God as Source, Guide, and Goal of all that is, to paraphrase St. Paul?
Faith, religious awe, worship and devotional practices arise from our depths, not
from rational analysis; we will never by exercise of our reason be able fully to
explain the human experiences of the Mystery we call God.
In a 1917 classic study of religion, Rudolf Otto wrote on the idea of the Holy, the
description of the experience of the Holy or a God as the ganz andere, the wholly
Other, that mystery beyond that breaks through to us but, breaking through to us,
making us unalterably aware of the reality in the presence, remains the hidden
one, the hidden mystery. The religious experience, Otto describes very, very
wonderfully when he says, it is
... the feeling that remains where the concept fails.
It is an experience that transcends the possibility of conceptualizing it,
articulating it, putting it into idea form.
But, put it into idea form, we will. We seem to have to do that. We will try to
understand. The understanding is never the same as the experience in itself, but
© Grand Valley State University
�Do I Need Religion?
Richard A. Rhem
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being human as we are, rational creatures, reflective, self-conscious, we will
inevitably think about and seek to bring to expression at least in some symbolic
form that which will point beyond itself to the experience that has broken in upon
us. That seems to be the universal human experience, and that is the origin of
religion.
Religion has at least these three basic components: There is that which is
believed, or the doctrine. There is the mode of worship, devotion, practice, the
ritual, the liturgy, which seeks to be an expression, an action that gives
expression to the idea. And then, there is the drawing out of the implications of
the experience for daily living, or ethics. So, doctrine or theology, cult or worship,
ethics or morality - that’s the nature of human religion.
I have said this before a number of times, but I’m going to say it again until you
wake up in the middle of the night and repeat it to yourself - religion is a human,
creative construction. Religions don’t fall out of heaven full-blown. We make
them up. Not arbitrarily or capriciously, but we make them up in response to the
in-breaking of the sacred or the Holy or God, the experience that is still there
when the concept fails, but the experience that drives us to seek to articulate the
nature of it. We construct our human religion in response to the in-breaking of
the mystery that is God.
Therefore, and this is critical, the knowledge of the world, the universe, the
human being and society, in a word – the worldview, because it provides the
framework of human religion and will from time to time move beyond an earlier
understanding, will leave the religious structure, imagery and symbol with a
framework that no longer makes sense.
For a time the religious community will do a translation - the three-storied
universe heaven
earth
hell
is translated into modern cosmology with meanings spiritualized.
But, at some point, a symbol system breaks down and it no longer speaks, it can
no longer point beyond itself to the Ultimate. Then one must decide - either to
chuck religion as nonsense, or to recognize that an outmoded structure does not
spell the death of God.
Edward O. Wilson, in his recently published book, Consilience, talks about his
experience as a good Southern Baptist lad who went through the evangelical
experience of conversion and all the rest, but having a curious mind from the
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Richard A. Rhem
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beginning, eventually went off to school where he says, "I chose to doubt." Then,
in his distinguished career as a biologist who recognized the place of religion in
people’s lives, he recognized the importance of religion in giving orientation, in
giving meaning, significance to life, and so forth. But he also recognized that he
was one person who could not continue to understand reality as continually being
unfolded in our presence before the pursuit of the natural scientist and still
somehow or other believe that there was a literal anchoring of conceptuality back
2000 or 3000 years. He refused to believe that the final revelation of God was put
in stone by an agricultural culture 2000 years ago at the eastern end of the
Mediterranean. He experienced cognitive dissonance.
Wilson raises the interesting question whether science, the examination and
exploration of reality, may not be a continuation of "Holy Writ," only on better
tested ground. He suggests the data of scientific investigation may play the role
that once revelation played in religion - satisfying the religious hunger to know
one’s place in the universe.
So far, the theory of everything has eluded even the great intellects of an Einstein
and a Hawking. And if one day the unity of knowledge becomes a reality, even
then one will have to choose whether or not behind it is still the Mystery that
manifests itself, yet remains hidden.
The questions we will be asking this summer are questions that arise because our
religious system, its imagery, symbol and conceptuality derives from another
time, based on an outmoded worldview. Therefore, in Wilson’s terms, there is
widespread cognitive dissonance.
Many have simply given up religious faith. Some of us struggle to bring religious
experience into meaningful conversation with our present knowledge of the
world.
That is my challenge for this summer season. But, the question arises: Do I need
it?
- Not if my religious practice was only a way to please a God Who might
condemn me to eternal punishment.
- Not if I practice religious devotion just to cover the bases, just in case ...
I read last night again The Grand Inquisitor, by Dostoevsky. Chilling, chilling!
Jesus appears in Seville, Spain, during the time of the Inquisition. They had just
burned 100 heretics at the stake and Jesus appears before a crowd of people and
the Cardinal, the church ecclesiast, sees him, has him thrown into jail, then goes
to speak with him, and tells him how the freedom of which Jesus spoke and for
which he gave his life cannot be handled by the people. The people need
authority. They live by miracle, mystery, and authority. Let them submit. Let
them be slaves, simply obedient, unthinking. Give them bread. That’s what the
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Richard A. Rhem
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masses need, not the freedom of spirit of which Jesus spoke and incarnated. And
then the Cardinal says, after Jesus refuses to respond, but only arises and plants a
kiss on the wizened old face, the Cardinal says, "Get out! Get out and never
return!"
Well, we don’t need a lot more of that religion, even though there’s a lot of it alive
and well on Planet Earth. But, do we need it? No. No, not absolutely. But, I think
that there’s a loss without it. There’s a loss to our humanity and a loss to world
community.
The scripture lessons were read to indicate different experiences of God. I’m used
to watching the sunset. It’s been magnificent, but Friday morning I had to take
Nancy to the airport early and I caught a sunrise. Huge, flaming globe just over
the horizon. I said, "My goodness, it comes up like it goes down!" I’m not a
morning person, but the sunset or the moon, the stars say, "O Lord, our Lord,
how magnificent is your name in all of the earth. When I consider the stars, the
moon, the wonder of it all, I say how small am I." The sense of humility and
smallness before the vastness, the wonder of the world. But, I am a little less than
God! How can I give expression to that in a secular fashion? What if I can’t sing?
What if I have no song, no songwriter, and no one to whom to sing? Or, in life’s
anxieties and depression, the hunger for God. My soul thirsts for God, for the
living God. Or, like Isaiah, to come someday and to have the place filled with
smoke and to hear the rumbling and to be encountered by the mystery, the
fascinating and terrorizing mystery and to feel one’s own guilt and uncleanness
and unworthiness, and then to hear the word, "You’re cleansed. Your sin is
forgiven." And to be commissioned to significant living and service.
You don’t need religion. But I believe that to fail seriously to engage, to practice,
to be observant is a very great loss and leads to a truncated human experience
and a distortion of all that we’re intended to be.
Paul said to the Athenians, "You’re really religious. There’s an idol to an unknown
God just in case you missed one." I don’t need that kind of religion. But,
yesterday I had the privilege of being invited to the Bar Mitzvah of the son, David,
of Rabbi Alan and Anna Alpert, and in that Jewish community again, on Bar
Mitzvah day, which is high celebration, I felt the warmth, I felt the solidity of
family and of community. I regret that I wasn’t born Jewish because it’s not like
being born a Christian where you have to keep worrying about becoming one,
where you have to get converted, you have to keep wondering if you’re in or out.
A Jew is just a Jew! Can’t do anything about it. So, they celebrate, and those who
are observant, who are serious, celebrate it in wonderful warmth of community.
And there’s something more there than just good friends and family ties. It is in
the presence of a Mystery that here and there, now and again, has broken in upon
us, creating awe, wonder, gratitude, drawing forth worship, enhancing our
humanity and nudging us toward the things that make for peace.
You don’t really need it, but you’ll miss a lot if you don’t have it.
© Grand Valley State University
�Do I Need Religion?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
APPENDIX
. . . I found it a wonderful feeling not just to taste the unification
metaphysics but also to be released from the confinement of
fundamentalist religion. I had been raised a Southern Baptist, laid
backward under the water on the sturdy arm of a pastor, been born again.
I knew the healing power of redemption. Faith, hope, and charity were in
my bones, and with millions of others I knew that my savior Jesus Christ
would grant me eternal life. More pious than the average teenager, I read
the Bible cover to cover, twice. But now at college, steroid-driven into
moods of adolescent rebellion, I chose to doubt. I found it hard to accept
that our deepest beliefs were set in stone by agricultural societies of the
eastern Mediterranean more than two thousand years ago. I suffered
cognitive dissonance between the cheerfully reported genocidal wars of
these people and Christian civilization in 1940s Alabama. It seemed to me
that the Book of Revelation might be black magic hallucinated by an
ancient primitive. And I thought, surely a loving personal God, if He is
paying attention, will not abandon those who reject the literal
interpretation of the biblical cosmology. It is only fair to award points for
intellectual courage. Better damned with Plato and Bacon, Shelly said,
than go to heaven with Paley and Malthus. But most of all, Baptist
theology made no provision for evolution. The biblical authors had missed
the most important revelation of all! Could it be that they were not really
privy to the thoughts of God? Might the pastors of my childhood, good and
loving men though they were, be mistaken? It was all too much, and
freedom was ever so sweet. I drifted away from the church, not definitively
agnostic or atheistic, just Baptist no more.
Still, I had no desire to purge religious feelings. They were bred in me; they
suffused the wellsprings of my creative life. I also retained a small measure
of common sense. To wit, people must belong to a tribe; they yearn to have
a purpose larger than themselves. We are obliged by the deepest drives of
the human spirit to make ourselves more than animated dust, and we
must have a story to tell about where we came from, and why we are here.
Could Holy Writ be just the first literate attempt to explain the universe
and make ourselves significant within it? Perhaps science is a continuation
on new and better-tested ground to attain the same end. If so, then in that
sense science is religion liberated and writ large.
Such, I believe, is the source of the Ionian Enchantment: Preferring a
search for objective reality over revelation is another way of satisfying
religious hunger. It is an endeavor almost as old as civilization and
intertwined with traditional religion, but it follows a very different course
— a stoic’s creed, an acquired taste, a guidebook to adventure plotted
across rough terrain. It aims to save the spirit, not by surrender but by
liberation of the human mind. Its central tenet, as Einstein knew, is the
© Grand Valley State University
�Do I Need Religion?
Richard A. Rhem
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unification of knowledge. When we have unified enough certain
knowledge, we will understand who we are and why we are here.
If those committed to the quest fail, they will be forgiven. When lost, they
will find another way. The moral imperative of humanism is the endeavor
alone, whether successful or not, provided the effort is honorable and
failure memorable. The ancient Greeks expressed the idea in a myth of
vaulting ambition. Daedalus escapes from Crete with his son Icarus on
wings he has fashioned from feathers and wax. Ignoring the warnings of
his father, Icarus flies toward the sun, whereupon his wings come apart
and he falls into the sea. That is the end of Icarus in the myth. But we are
left to wonder: Was he just a foolish boy? Did he pay the price for hubris,
for pride in sight of the gods? I like to think that, on the contrary, his
daring represents a saving human grace. And so the great astrophysicist
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar could pay tribute to the spirit of his
mentor, Sir Arthur Eddington, by saying: Let us see how high we can fly
before the sun melts the wax in our wings.
Edward O. Wilson. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Vintage, first
edition, 1999.
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
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Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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Event
Pentecost VI
Series
Can I Honestly Believe?
Scripture Text
Psalm 8:1, Psalm 42:2, Acts 17:22
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, 1999
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KII-01_RA-0-19980712
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1998-07-12
Title
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Do I Need Religion?
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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Text
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on July 12, 1998 entitled "Do I Need Religion?", as part of the series "Can I Honestly Believe?", on the occasion of Pentecost VI, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Psalm 8:1, Psalm 42:2, Acts 17:22.
Critical Thinking
Nature of Religion
Religious Quest
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9785024720c20c1e1e854d84f4caa13d
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Text
Freedom’s Gift: Grace
From the Lent sermon series: Freedom: Costly and Conflicted
Text: Isaiah 42:3; Luke 23:34
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
Lent V, March 12, 1989
Transcription of the spoken sermon
He will not break a bruised reed, or snuff out a smoldering wick. Isaiah 42:3
Father, forgive them; they do not know what they are doing. Luke 23:34
Of all the remembrances of Jesus recorded in the Gospels, none is more startling
than the prayer of Jesus on the cross,
Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.
There is perhaps no other word or action of Jesus that so embodies his
understanding of God, of himself, of humankind. There is no clearer expression
of his freedom, freedom to live out his own truth, freedom for God and freedom
for others, than this prayer for the forgiveness of those who were crucifying him.
Father, forgive them... With these words, we are shocked into awareness of how
little we have learned the gospel and how poorly we have mediated the radical
grace of God. Father, forgive them... Words that contradict every natural impulse
of our being.
Jesus modeled out a magnificent freedom, a freedom that transcended outward
circumstances, enabling him to live a life of active love and grace rather than
anxious and hostile reaction. Impaled on a cruel Roman cross, he was yet free.
Taunted and spat upon and held in derision, he responded with grace, absorbing
the evil and not responding in kind, thus breaking the vicious cycle of vengeance.
Well, you say, but Jesus was different. Was he really? Is not the mystery of the
incarnation, of God-with-us-in-Jesus, the story of God present in a genuinely
human life? The freedom Jesus lived which issued in such grace was not some
“given” of divine nature. No, it was a freedom won, a freedom costly and
conflicted. To be sure, it was the result of his rootedness in God. Remember the
scene at his baptism -the voice from heaven claims him, the Spirit descends upon
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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him. This was, to be sure, God’s beloved Son. But, for all that, there was nothing
magic about the process of Jesus gaining a sense of identity and vision for
ministry.
In the Wilderness he struggled with the Tempter – what kind of ministry would
he carry out and how would he do it?
John the Baptist had designs for him. John hoped he would fulfill Malachi’s
prediction of the return of Elijah who would bring fire, the judgment of refining
fire, to the earth, signaling the end of the world, the damnation of the wicked and
the vindication of the righteous.
Jesus had to overcome the obstacle of John’s expectation.
Coming from the struggle in the wilderness, Jesus announced a ministry
patterned after the Servant of Isaiah - a ministry of healing and liberation and
Good News.
John was concerned and confused. He sent his disciples with the question, “Are
you the one who is to come, or should we look for another?”
Without argument or offense, Jesus simply pointed to his work. He went on to
affirm John and John’s ministry but it was also clear that he was saying, “John, I
am the one you were hoping for, but my mission is one of grace, not judgment.”
He announced his ministry of grace and healing in his hometown synagogue and
the radical grace far transcending the narrow exclusiveness of Jewish religion
was an offense to the hometown crowd. If John was confused, they were angry,
ready to lynch him on the spot.
But again, his inner strength and calm assurance rooted in God’s call enabled him
to move through the hostile crowd unharmed.
When the religious leaders called him mad, beside himself, his mother and
brothers set out to seize him and bring him home. But, once again, without anger
or breaking of relationship, he simply lived out of his own vision and truth and
said, “My mother and my brothers and my sisters are those who do the will of
God.”
The masterful freedom with which Jesus lived was costly and conflicted. He lived
out of an inner vision and thus was able to embody the grace of God in all
circumstances of his life.
The grace of God Jesus mediated is the only power for human transformation.
There are other ways and means of controlling and coercing human behavior, but
only grace as the active outflowing of God’s love really changes persons from the
inside out. This was what Jesus’ whole ministry was about - the promiscuous
© Grand Valley State University
�Freedom’s Gift: Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
proclamation of the prodigal love and grace of God. The portrait of Jesus’
ministry in the Gospels makes that clear.
The Gospel portraits of Jesus portray the radical grace which was his hallmark.
Just after reporting the question of the imprisoned John and Jesus’ response,
Luke tells the story of the dinner party given by Simon, the Pharisee. Without
questioning Simon’s motivation in inviting Jesus, it is clear that he wanted to see
firsthand this teacher who was causing such a stir with his gracious ministry and
who seemed to have so little regard for the punctilious religious observances
which securely bound the sect of the Pharisees. Could Jesus really be a prophet?
Was he someone that must be taken seriously or was he just another upstart
itinerant preacher? He got his answer, but not as he expected. During dinner a
prostitute came in off the street because she learned Jesus was there. She
intended to anoint his feet with oil of myrrh, but her emotions overtook her and
she began to weep, her tears falling on Jesus’ feet. She wiped the tears with her
hair, kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment – a scene of great
tenderness and deep emotion, but a scene hardly in place in Simon’s house or on
such an occasion.
Embarrassed though he was, the rules of hospitality must prevail. Simon endured
the scene. But at least his question about Jesus was answered. This was no
prophet for, if he were, he would have known the immoral character of this
woman and would hardly have tolerated such a display of bad taste. Jesus
surmised Simon’s surmisings and proceeded to tell a story of two debtors, one
owing a small amount and the other a large amount. They were alike, however, in
that neither one had anything with which to pay. The creditor therefore freely
forgave them both their debts. Jesus’ question to Simon, “Which one will love
him most,” was given the obvious response by Simon: “I should think the one
that was let off most.” Jesus said, “You are right,” and then proceeded to apply
the story to the present situation. Simon, Jesus pointed out, had been proper in
his behaviour but had failed to offer the kind of courtesy and care that bespoke
deep kindness and love.
The woman, however, had been a veritable gusher of emotion, revealing the
deepest level of love. The application was obvious: Simon had little sense of
gracious forgiveness; he loved little. But the woman whose sins were many had
experienced grace and, consequently, loved deeply.
Certainly Luke used this incident to illustrate Jesus’ ministry of grace and he set
it against the background of John’s question, “Are you the one or should we look
for another?” The story illustrates the vision of ministry Jesus was living out, a
ministry not of judgment but of grace, a ministry not to call the righteous, but
sinners to repentance. Luke is the evangelist who recorded Jesus’ inaugural
message in his hometown – a Good News message. Here he shows that ministry
in action, a ministry that offers grace and thus transforms human life. Jesus knew
that only grace transforms; only grace changes persons.
© Grand Valley State University
�Freedom’s Gift: Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
Breathing the heady atmosphere of freedom that comes from surrender to the
gracious God, Jesus was able to mediate grace that transformed persons.
Whoever the woman was that wept over his feet, this was not the first time she
encountered him. Somewhere, sometime his words of grace had found their mark
in her soul. Perhaps he caught her eye or mediated grace in a touch that healed.
She knew the forgiveness of sins and her outburst of love was the consequence.
Jesus’ freedom in God enabled him to mediate grace.
But what is at stake is bigger than the transformation of persons; grace mediated
out of freedom alone can save the world. How tragic that the Church has never
been able to live by radical grace for very long. Throughout the history of the
Christian tradition there have appeared those who have glimpsed that grace,
experienced the freedom grace bestows and out of that freedom proclaimed the
grace of God in all its radicality. We think of Paul - the Pharisee who lived
blamelessly according to the legal prescriptions of Jewish religion until grace
broke upon him with all its liberating power, setting him free to announce the
Kingdom’s Good News. And Martin Luther’s experience of grace gave him the
inward strength and freedom to stand against the whole establishment of the
Christian Church much as Jesus did in his day.
Still, for the most part, the Church has fallen back into the bondage of religious
observance, legal prescription and self-righteous performance. There has been all
too little joyous celebration of Good News, all too much gloomy demand and
threatening coercion. The Church has not been a haven for the broken and
battered, the fearful, the guilty, the crippled and the captive. Too often, it has
crippled and cramped and burdened and broken. Rather than letting grace flow
in a mighty tide, the impression the religious community has made on the world
at large is one of self-righteousness, judgmental disgust and militant
condemnation.
Religion has bad press in the world and it has richly deserved it, for it has been
characterized by binding and breaking rather than by the commission of the
Servant of the Lord in whom Jesus found his identity and vocation. Isaiah speaks
of the Servant anointed with God’s Spirit who
... will not break a bruised reed, or snuff out a smouldering wick.
Rather, the Servant is called,
To open eyes that are blind,
to bring captives out of prison,
out of the dungeons where they lie in darkness.
Reflect for a moment on religion in these waning years of the twentieth century.
What a surprising phenomenon it is. With what resurgence it has stormed into
center stage. As the century opened, one might have thought that the classic
Protestant liberalism would alone survive, accommodated as it was to the
© Grand Valley State University
�Freedom’s Gift: Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
dominant culture; there seemed only a narrow gap between enlightened Western
civilization and the Kingdom of God. Then the terrible disruption of violence and
war shattered the easy optimism of the liberal vision. Yet, near mid-century,
Dietrich Bonhoeffer could speak out of the chaos of a Nazi concentration camp of
“a world come of age.” But what do we see? An angry, militant fundamentalism
under various names, yet one in spirit, whether Christian, Jewish or Islamic.
In my mind it is not at all clear that the world is more endangered by the threat of
nuclear war than by the threat of zealous religion. It even seems more likely to me
that the next great human catastrophe will evolve from some form of religious
fanaticism than from a nuclear confrontation.
Let me remind you of the recent book by Charles Colson, Kingdom in Conflict,
where he imagines a scenario in which a fundamentalist Christian is elected
president and, because of his literal reading of certain Old Testament prophecies,
fails to act to stave off an attack by a fanatical right-wing group of Jews on the
Dome of the Rock - the sacred shrine of Islam in Jerusalem. It is an imagined
scenario, but highly conceivable.
Of course, the most obvious representative of the religion of coercion and legal
prescription is the Ayatollah Khomeni. I confessed in a previous message the
anger that rises in my being when I see the totalitarion grip he holds on the
masses and the vile hatred he breathes into their hearts. But the Ayatollah is only
a radical example of what religion always tends to be - controlling, coercing,
prescriptive, demanding, burdensome and binding. The Ayatollah has a book
from the prophet who got the word straight from God. In that sense he differs
little from the fundamentalist Jew or Christian. The book binds. Thus, when the
book says he who defames the prophet must be killed, Khomeni without qualm of
conscience says Salman Rushdie must die because his novel Satanic Verses
defames the prophet of Islam.
Is it any different than the established Judaism of Jesus’ day, which said we have
a law and according to that law, he must die?
It is all of a piece - all cut from the same cloth.
But, Jesus was free of the bondage of religion, free of the coercive legalism and
ritualism of the religious institution. Jesus was rooted in God and therefore free
from every human bondage and, in that freedom, mediated God’s grace to all
without condition - the grace alone that can bring redemption to a broken world
torn by ideological strife and religious hatred.
Rushdie must die, demands the Ayatollah. He defamed the prophet; kill him.
Protect your religion; protect your prophet; protect your God.
See Jesus on the cross in anguish experiencing the very worst hell that
humankind can create. As they mock him, taunt him, jeer and spit upon him, he
© Grand Valley State University
�Freedom’s Gift: Grace
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
prays. He prays out of the freedom of his own truth. He prays out of the vision of
his calling; he prays consistent with his whole ministry; he prays,
Father, forgive them...
For Jesus knows that it is grace alone that transforms persons; he knows it is only
grace lived out in freedom that can save the world from its own destruction.
Father, forgive them, he prays.
Father, forgive us.
Set us free to forgive – to be the agents of such grace in our world.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
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Rhem, Richard A.
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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Sound
Text
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
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Event
Lent V
Series
Freedom: Costly and Conflicted
Scripture Text
Isa 42:1-7, Luke 23:34
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-19890312
Date
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1989-03-12
Title
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Freedom's Gift: Grace
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
Type
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Sound
Text
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on March 12, 1989 entitled "Freedom's Gift: Grace", as part of the series "Freedom: Costly and Conflicted", on the occasion of Lent V, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isa 42:1-7, Luke 23:34.
Forgiveness
Lent
Nature of Religion
Non-exclusive
Radical Grace of God
Way of Jesus
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b1cee27816d030d545979716cd359eba.pdf
44920d2b4ecf6764736091c8e6e231b5
PDF Text
Text
From Orthodoxy to Freedom
Free Spirit,
A publication of Fountain Street Church,
Fall, 2001, p.17
Richard A. Rhem
When we could no longer with integrity affirm the faith understanding of our
religious community, we were faced with a critical decision: either we must leave
or we must engage in a process of thought, study, and revision in order to bring
our religious understanding to new expression. When I could no longer honestly
preach the orthodox and evangelical faith in which I had been nurtured and
educated and which, in my first four years in the ministry, I had proclaimed as
the pastor of my Spring Lake congregation, I chose the latter course.
After graduating from seminary in 1960, I came to the ministry armed with “the
authoritative Word of God.” The Bible, inspired by the Holy Spirit, was inerrant
and infallible. The preacher's authority lay in the faithful exposition of the biblical
text. Even though serious biblical criticism had been around since the late
eighteenth century, my denomination did not deal seriously with it.
But, after seven years of pastoral experience and preaching, the last three in New
Jersey, I found my authoritarian foundation crumbling. As I became aware of a
critical approach to scripture, it was no longer possible for me simply to assert,
“The Bible says...” I had to begin again. I needed a new foundation if I were to
continue in a preaching ministry.
A European pilgrimage that lasted for four years was not simply a quest for an
academic degree, but an existential quest for a religious faith I could believe in
with intellectual integrity and preach with authenticity. My search and research
were intensive - and the quest continues, but of this I became convinced - there is
no authoritarian claim that can ground authentic religious experience, whether
the claim be grounded in tradition, church or scripture. The witness to religious
experience - in my case, the witness of the preacher – is precisely that: it is
witness.
Traditional religious communities have a “founding story” or event that is the
source of their traditions; for example, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is
the founding story of Christianity. One may believe the founding story is a
revelation of the Sacred, but its expression is human; it cannot be otherwise. The
founding story can only be told by means of human language and thought forms.
The stories, creeds and confessional statements are human imaginative
constructs and they are most often separated from the revelatory moment by a
long time. Orthodoxy or “right thinking” is not achieved immediately. In the case
© Grand Valley State University
�From Orthodoxy to Freedom
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
of Christian orthodoxy, it took centuries before the Church settled questions of
who Jesus was, how he was related to God, and how God was to be understood.
But this long process is soon forgotten. A human imaginative construct in the
form of a statement in a creed becomes absolutized - the final word, the only true
expression of a given religion. Orthodox “truth” is thus established, defended,
and used as a weapon to outlaw those who fail to adhere to the established line.
The creeds and symbols of the religion become “fundamentals” to be externally
accepted and endlessly repeated.
When a religious faith reaches the orthodox and fundamentalist stage, it lives on
by authoritarian claim. Free inquiry is no longer welcome; one may think only
within prescribed limits. Ongoing human experience, historical development and
scientific discovery are resisted because new knowledge threatens a creed frozen
in time and established institutional order. The effect is deadening.
When all of this became clear to me, I still remained within my faith community,
but I challenged the accepted orthodox formulations at several points. When
called upon to recant and thereby to deny my best insight and understanding, I
refused and was declared to be beyond the limits of my faith community's
orthodoxy.
I was fortunate; the congregation I had served for over a quarter century voted by
strong majority to move with me into institutional independence where the spirit
of freedom prevails and free inquiry is encouraged.
We are continuing to seek to create a community of love and grace and
compassion, a community of open mind and warm heart. In the early 90s, we
expressed our vision thus:
Christ Community is an alternative to church as usual.
We live together in the awe of worship,
in the Presence of the Mystery of God
Whose inclusive grace moves us to embrace all
with unconditional love and gracious acceptance,
irrespective of race, gender, economic status, age or sexual orientation,
loving the world as God loves it,
following the way of Jesus,
sensitive to the winds of the Spirit,
seeking to discern the Word of God in the biblical tradition,
the movement of God in the context of our culture.
And the story goes on...
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
From Orthodoxy to Freedom
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Free Spirit
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2001-10-01
Rights
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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eng
Type
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Text
Identifier
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Kll-01_RA-4-20011001
Description
An account of the resource
Article created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on October 1, 2001 entitled "From Orthodoxy to Freedom", it appeared in Free Spirit, Fountain Street Church, Fall, 2001, p.17. Tags: Fundamentalism, Critical Thinking, Inclusive, Nature of Religion, Community of Faith.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Community of Faith
Critical Thinking
Fundamentalism
Inclusive
Nature of Religion
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8571bd39f7a1907b6d758c6d2d5efe18.pdf
2c269e191e3ae47a0f442303af009f06
PDF Text
Text
God in Human Experience
Trinity Sunday
Text: Ezekiel 37:5-6; Acts 10:38, 44, 48
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
May 29, 1994
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Trinity Sunday is the Sunday that follows the celebration of Pentecost, and rather
naturally so. Just like in the Apostles’ Creed we say, I believe in God. I believe in
Jesus Christ. I believe in the Holy Spirit, but there is no mention of the Trinity or
the doctrine of the Trinity. So in the early Christian experience there was a
Trinitarian experience.
We’ve just been through the whole cycle of the life of Christ, the great events of
Jesus’ birth and life and death and resurrection and exaltation. Then the
celebration of the coming of the Spirit of God, and then, as a Christian
community we worship, we recognize that the God that we worship is the God
who is come to us revealed in Jesus and is with us in the power of the Spirit, the
one true and eternal God, the creator of all, the source of all and the goal of all.
That one true and eternal God is known to us through the lens of Jesus and is
experienced by us in the power of the Spirit.
The experience of that early Jesus movement was a Trinitarian experience. It was
the experience of God in just that way. There was no thought in that early
community that they were leaving the God of Israel. They were not finding
another God. They were not turning away from the God of their fathers and
mothers and going in a new way. They were worshiping none other than the God
of Israel who was the creator of all. They had no consciousness whatsoever that
they were moving their allegiance to another. This was the God of Israel. That’s
why you have throughout the whole of the New Testament scriptures the constant
citation from the Hebrew Scriptures. That’s why, on the Day of Pentecost itself,
Peter stood up and said, “This is that that was spoken by the prophet Job.” This is
what we’ve been waiting for.” They were conscious of a total continuity with the
worship of the God that they had known from their mother’s knees, so to speak,
and to this present experience of that God revealed in Jesus, present with them in
the Spirit. Their experience was a Trinitarian experience.
They had not understood fully, obviously, in the experience with Jesus in the
flesh. The Gospels were written decades later, and they were written on the other
© Grand Valley State University
�God in Human Experience
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
side of Easter, reflecting back on their experience with Jesus. But it is obvious
they didn’t know what was going on. In fact, the disciples come through as rather
dull. Now they weren’t really dull, but they didn’t know. It wasn’t obvious. It
wasn’t self-evident. It was only in retrospect, and then they reached back to the
Prophet Isaiah, and they took the name of that one who was promised, Immanuel
— God with us. They said, “Jesus was God with us. Jesus was Immanuel.” In
retrospect, reflecting on their experience, they said it was as though God was with
us in this one. Now the day of Pentecost was a mind boggling, life transforming
experience, an ecstatic experience that could not be contained, and they said,
“This is God. This is Jesus. What is this?”
And God said, “That’s right. It is I. I am with you in the flesh, in Jesus, now with
you in the power of the Spirit.” They didn’t put all that together in neat formulas
or write a creed there. They simply witnessed to an overpowering experience of
the one God, the creator of all. “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one.” That was
their God. That was the God they were experiencing, the God they had rubbed
elbows with in Jesus, and whom they now somehow or other knew to be present
in them, a power and a presence that gave them energy and gave them peace,
their experience. That early Jesus movement was a Trinitarian experience. First,
is the experience, that to which they bore witness, and that witness comes
through in the Biblical data.
Let’s think about the Biblical data for a moment, starting in the Hebrew
Scriptures. As we said last week, the Spirit of God was not inaugurated on
Pentecost. Pentecost was a time of the outpouring of the Spirit universally, in a
powerful way. Remember, when we baptize a child here we pray to God to
breathe through the water to make the water an instrument of grace. And we
usually refer to the first verses of the opening chapter of Genesis. “In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth . . . and it was all void . . . and
the wind of God, or the breath of God, blew over the deep.” Remember? And out
of that chaos came the creation, the cosmos. It was God breathing, because
remember that Hebrew word Ruah, we translate “wind,” we translate it “Spirit,”
we translate it “breath.” It is the same word, but it points to that energizing
creative power of God, to the Spirit of God active in the creation of the heavens
and the earth.
Or the Old Testament prophecy that I read, the wonderful story in Ezekiel. Judah
is in exile and in Babylon; they don’t have a prayer. Their bones are all dried up.
Their hope is gone. And God takes the prophet by the nape of the neck and says,
“Prophesy to those bones, that valley of dried bones.”
“Do you think, prophet, that those dried bones can live?”
The prophet says, “You know, O God.” God says, “Prophesy. Speak the word.”
And the word comes and those bones begin to come together and there is muscle,
and there is flesh, and there is skin, and they stand up. And God says, “Speak
© Grand Valley State University
�God in Human Experience
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
again.” And they are full of life. A standing army as it were. Reborn, by the Spirit
of God or by the breath of God, or the wind of God.
And Mary, that young Hebrew girl, overshadowed, we are told, by the breath of
God, or the wind of God, or the Spirit of God. And there is a conception, and
there is a child born, and of that one the apostles say, “The word was made flesh
and dwelt among us.”
And Jesus, on the threshold of his ministry, goes into the wilderness and
struggles with who he is and what he is to do and he comes out of that experience
full of the power, the Spirit, the breath, the wind of God so that the life of Jesus is
exercised in consequence of that breath of God blowing through Jesus. So, the
Spirit of God didn’t begin on Pentecost. It’s like the movement we talk about: God
the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, but that’s a kind of Christian
prejudice. Actually, if we wanted to be more correct, biblically, we’d say, God,
Spirit, Word. Because it was God breathing that brought about the word made
flesh.
The story of Peter and Cornelius — it’s a wonderful story. I see it as a model for
understanding so much of the New Testament development, and how really we
ourselves ought to be doing theology today. Here’s Peter – remember the vision
on the rooftop – and the call is to go to Cornelius, the Roman Centurion, a
Gentile. Peter struggles a bit, but nonetheless he cannot withstand the power and
the compelling force of that vision. So he goes, and Cornelius is there to greet him
and Peter gingerly steps inside his house, where he shouldn’t even have been
according to his Jewish regulation. Cornelius says he’s had a vision, too, and that
it was the angel of the Lord that told him to beckon Peter. So what can Peter do?
He scratches his head a bit. He starts out by saying, “God is not partial? Whew!
That’s a new one.” Then he begins to tell the story of Jesus.
I think it is so interesting in those verses that we read together that in the 38th
verse it tells how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit, and with
power. Now notice, it’s God who anoints. Remember, anoint is the same word for
Messiah or for Christ. It’s like how God ‘Christed’ Jesus with the Holy Spirit and
power. He tells the story of Jesus, and while he’s preaching would you believe it?
Pfft — God starts heavy breathing. It’s obvious that the Spirit falls on that
congregation.
Now those of you who were here last week (some of you said it was really nice—
once in a while. You know, it’s O.K. once in a while), but I’ve got to tell you last
week’s worship was probably closer to the first Pentecost than today’s worship.
Sure glad that’s over, aren’t you? Sure glad that we’ve moved beyond all that
excess, that enthusiasm. I like it domesticated, a nice routine, where you can
manage it a bit. I mean, after all, this is a worship of God, and one ought to be
respectful and responsible and a little deadpan. One ought not to get involved too
much, because if you get too involved, if you really started feeling the Wind of
God blowing through you, you’d stand up and start hollering and dancing in the
© Grand Valley State University
�God in Human Experience
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
aisles and singing and shouting. And I wouldn’t know what to do with you.
(Laughter) And we might not be able to get through this service in an hour
(probably won’t anyway). (More laughter) I like it calm. Dignified. Don’t you?
Sure hope God never breathes heavily through this assembly while I’m on the
stool.
Well, that’s what happened. Peter is preaching along and the Holy Spirit falls and
the people start praising God. That’s never happened while I was preaching.
Thank God! (Laughter) It’s so obviously a work of God that Peter says he can’t
withhold water for baptizing these people. So what does he do? He orders them to
be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Well! They were really messed up. Peter
knows this is from God, he sees it as an experience of God, and he invites them to
be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ— Jesus the Christ, Jesus the anointed,
Jesus the Messiah, Jesus, the one filled with the Spirit.
That’s the kind of data you have in the Scriptures. It’s a bit unruly, it’s not neat.
It’s hard to get it into a nice neat formula. It took three hundred twenty-five years
before the Church was able to do that. At the Council of Nicaea they finally put
together a creedal statement which you can still find in your hymnbook, the
Nicean Creed which formulated very carefully in philosophical terms what they
sensed was happening back there. That formula has come down to us today, so
that we still speak of our faith as a Trinitarian Faith. Now the problem is, that
when Peter was preaching in Cornelius’ house, this was as fresh as the present
moment. This was an overpowering experience. They were actually ecstatic, out
of their minds in the adoration of God through that overwhelming experience.
Then the experience got regularized in a doctrine and put together in a creed.
Now people can say the creed and talk about the doctrine, and don’t need the
experience. Then, because there tends often to be a vacuum of experience – that
is, a lack of reality in one’s spiritual life – one begins to hang on words and
phrases as though the reality is the statement of it, when the statement of it is
simply a reflection after the fact. The story of the Church is a story of outliving
its experience, but continuing to reiterate the experience of yesterday.
Let me give you a couple of examples, and we’ll be done. In November of 1993
there was a conference in Minneapolis, St. Paul. It was held under the auspices of
the World Council of Churches, which designated 1988 - 1998 as a decade of
solidarity with women. It was a response to the feminist concerns for an
experience of God that connected with their experience. The Trinitarian
formulation—God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit – is, for many
women in our day, no longer a kind of formula that speaks to them or that they
are able to use in their worship. So the World Council of Church designated a
decade of solidarity with women, during which they are sponsoring several events
that are in the interest of finding new ways to express the understanding of God,
or, simply focusing theological reflection on this question.
© Grand Valley State University
�God in Human Experience
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
Now, that’s what the Church should be doing every day, every year, every decade.
It should be thinking about its faith so that it is constantly expressing its faith in a
way that connects with its experience. When our expression of faith no longer
connects with our experience, then we enter into fundamentalism.
Fundamentalism is the reiteration of formulas, answers to yesterday’s questions,
today. The thing that we really long for, all of us, is the expression of our faith
that gives witness to our present experience.
Well, this conference was held in November 1993 and a couple of the key players
were the United Presbyterian Church and the United Methodist Church. And, oh
my goodness, are they in trouble! The poor Presbyterians figure that they will lose
2.5 million dollars by the end of 1995 because of irate people who say that this
was some kind of a pagan ritual or festival. The Methodists, they don’t know what
they’re in for yet, but they’re in deep, deep trouble. There is a controversy
brewing across the country. If you read the newspapers and magazines you’ll
probably become aware of this. Ninety-nine percent of the pastors who retreat on
this on Trinity Sunday would lead their congregations to say, “Isn’t that awful.”
You happen to be that privileged group of the 1% where I want to say, what they
were trying to do is perfectly alright, legitimate, necessary, the kind of thing we
ought to be doing all the time, because the last word was not spoken in 325 or 451
AD. We cannot give the finest witness to our present experience of God through
formulations that at one time were at white-heat, the expression of the way God
was experienced then. I use this as an illustration, not to go into the subject of
that re-imagining conference, but to say to you that it is the responsibility of the
body of Christ, always, to be finding the freshest, finest way to worship God in
terms of our present experience. If we simply reiterate yesterday’s formulas and
creeds, we are really bearing witness to a hollowness of experience. And what we
really need is that fresh taste of God today, that fresh experience of God breathing
through us today so that our experience today is interpreted, or is able to be
interpreted, in light of our worship of God and our trust in God.
One other example: In our world, as I have been saying to you for a long time,
religion is the most dangerous force alive. It is that which is fueling much of the
ethnic conflict in the trouble spots around the world. We need to be in dialogue
with our Jewish brothers and sisters, and with our Muslim brothers and sisters.
And, as a matter of fact, our Jewish folk and Islamic folk are clear: God is one. We
should be clear on that too. There is no formulation of the trinity that would
claim anything else. And there is no question, as we saw in the Hebrew
Scriptures, the Spirit of God is understood in Judaism as the creative, energizing
force of God. So, we’ve got two down. That leaves the understanding of Jesus, and
that’s why we’ve been working at it for a year—to understand how in that
conversation we can come to a deeper understanding, recognizing what was
happening back there and what needs to happen now. No one needs to be
worried about that. It is incumbent upon us to do that. Yesterday’s answer won’t
do for today or for tomorrow.
© Grand Valley State University
�God in Human Experience
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
Theology is the constant challenge of the Church to interpret its faith in the light
of experience, and experience is ongoing. So, on this Trinity Sunday, I want to say
to you it is not enough for us simply to continue to say: God the Father, God the
Son, and God the Holy Spirit. That’s a part of our past. It’s a part of our heritage.
It gives us a guideline and a beacon light. It is within that context that we
continue to think. But, to hold onto it in the light of experience to the contrary, is
idolatry, is an act of faithlessness, is a refusal to trust the present Spirit of God to
lead us into broader horizons and deeper vistas, more of the glory and the wonder
of the one Eternal God whom we see through the lens of Jesus, who we
experience in the power of the Spirit. We need to go back to New Testament data,
take the raw data, allow all of the past to be that which shapes us and forms us,
and then go boldly out into our world with some fresh word.
When was the last time you caught God breathing through you? Friends, it’s time
to let go and experience the freedom of the children of God who are constantly
being led into the future by the God who beckons us, the God who is the source of
all, and the goal of all. God blessed forever.
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c228d993b10952a3d9cda228082b7eff.mp3
f8bbc694cf91b3665d96c065ba2c83ac
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
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English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
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KII-01
Coverage
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1981-2014
Format
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audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Trinity Sunday
Scripture Text
Ezekiel 37:5-6, Acts 10:38, 44, 48
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-19940529
Date
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1994-05-29
Title
A name given to the resource
God in Human Experience
Creator
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Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Format
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on May 29, 1994 entitled "God in Human Experience", on the occasion of Trinity Sunday, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Ezekiel 37:5-6, Acts 10:38, 44, 48.
Nature of Religion
Trinitarian Experience
Trinity Sunday
-
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PDF Text
Text
Honestly Human
From the series: Religion and the Human Story
Romans 7:14-25; Mark 2:18-28
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
March 2, 2003
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Religion has damaged as many people throughout the centuries as it has healed. I
say that not as a shocking opening statement, I say that not to be provocative, I
say that because I really believe that. Religion has had a tendency to become
oppressive and to lead people into depression rather than into liberation,
freedom, and joy.
I met a person, in this case a woman, this past week whom I had not seen for over
forty years, and over forty years ago she was what one would call a deeply
spiritual person, and I say that positively, a woman of prayer, prayer circles,
missionary activity, great piety and devotion. When I saw her this week after forty
years, I was surprised at her face. Someone has said you could tell a great deal
about a person from his or her face. Her face did not reflect to me joy, pleasure,
delight, or a certain lightness of being. Her face, her visage communicated to me
a certain heaviness, even grumpiness. I thought to myself that all of the intense,
sincere and serious cultivation of the spiritual life, for all of that, she did not
strike me as being very happy.
Not so long ago I took a book down from the shelf that I hadn't touched in a long
time, blew the dust off and it flopped open to a spot where there was a small
brochure. It was produced in the early 60s when I was here the first time. We
weren't called Christ Community at that time; the other name will not be
mentioned. There I was with my picture on it, of course, just fresh out of
seminary, and my visage communicated in that picture, a serious, moral,
completely dedicated, young man, young old man, and in that little brochure we
had a number of affirmations, all very orthodox which we surely believed. I was
embarrassed and amused as I looked at it. So, I took it to Duba's on Tuesday to
the luncheon and gave it to Duncan Littlefair just so he would know the kind of
persons he, was hanging out with. The next week he came to the table and said to
the table, "I want to show you a story of salvation," and he held up that brochure
with my picture and he said, "This man was lost." And then he pointed at me and
he said, "Look at his face. He has been saved." That's a true story and I know
existentially that it is true.
© Grand Valley State University
�Honestly Human
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
To be human is to be a creature in conflict. It is to be a creature living with a
constant tension. The Apostle Paul knew that and that famous seventh chapter of
Romans I can never read without feeling the intensity of Paul's own inward
struggle. There is a long history of interpretation of that passage. It is amazing
what people get out of that passage. I am not going to bore you with all of that
interpretation all over the map. I think it is enough to read it and to say Paul
knew the excruciating pain of being a creature living in tension.
W. H. Auden, in the little quote in your liturgy, says, "There are times when
wouldn't we like to be unreflective animals? Or disembodied spirits?" because
either way, no problem. Don't we know in the depths of our being that about
which Paul was writing? Of course we do. Krister Stendahl says that for Paul this
was a midrash on the Genesis story of the fall, because Paul was trying to
understand how he could affirm the Torah, the way of life, the law of God, how he
could affirm that in his inward being and do such a miserable job of fulfilling it.
How could he will to do one thing and do another?
Have you ever been there? Don't we know? Is not there that within us that would
soar and love and grace and bless and affirm, and that within us which is dark,
mean, and that which makes us blush? That is the human situation. St. Paul
would say it is because we are fallen creatures. I don't happen to agree with Paul
on that one. I don't think it is because we are fallen creatures, I think it is because
we are human creatures. Here we are, after eons and eons and eons of time, of
evolutionary process that has brought about creatures like us who carry with us
all of the animality of our background rooted in the dust of the earth, and
creatures who have become aware, conscious, susceptible to the lure of love, able
at times to soar into transcendent realms and ecstatic joy. We are not fallen. We
are just human, and to be honestly human is to recognize that conflict within
which is a given, with being human beings such as we are.
In the wisdom of the ancient church, it was that tension within that gave rise to
Mardi Gras. I became aware of that rather late in life, too. It was the covering of
the parade in New Orleans, I suppose some few years ago, when the commentator
spoke about the wisdom of the ancient church in giving people an opportunity to
cut loose, to blow off steam and get it all out of their system before they entered
into the darkness and the solemnity of that season of Lent when they were called
to self-denial and contemplation. It immediately made sense to me that the
church jn its best wisdom has understood the nature of the human which it is
explained as a term of being fallen or whether it is understood, as we do today,
with psychological insight and behavioral sciences, etc., that it is simply the given
with being what we are. Nonetheless, in the wisdom of the church, the whole
being needs to be recognized and ownership taken.
Some years ago when Gertrud Mueller Nelson was here and we were introduced
to her wonderful book on the celebration of the seasons, Dance With God. I was
struck with her description of Carnival, and the purpose of Carnival and the
© Grand Valley State University
�Honestly Human
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
acknowledgment of that shadow side that is within all of us and that need for
ownership thereof and release of, but release of in some measured and controlled
manner.
Martin Marty says that the church is afraid to allow us ecstasy, because ecstasy
actually from the Greek sfotis, out of that state in which one is, or to be out of
oneself; or to be beside oneself, to be crazy. The suggestion is that now and again
we should be given permission simply to be crazy. In the rituals of the church, to
the extent that they are healthy and human-enhancing, they will provide those
channels whereby we can tap our feet and be ushered into delight and know the
taste of sheer joy.
I love to watch the children when the jazz ensemble or the musicians are singing
on a day like this. I saw Greg Martin's little daughter doing her thing. She's got
the rhythm, Greg, she was replicating you right there in the pew, and when I see
that happen, I know there is something right about that. In contrast to the little
child who, sitting next to her mother, was turning around and making eye contact
and smiling with all those around until her mother reined her in, gave her a
squeeze and said, "Remember you're in church."
Gordon Cosby, who is the founder of that well-publicized and marvelous ministry
in Washington D.C., the Church of the Saviour, tells about a time when he was
invited by a New England congregation to come up and preach at a midweek
Lenten service, and he said the service was so dull and uninspiring, the only thing
that moved in the whole service were the offering plates. He and his wife left
rather down and dispirited and the congregation had secured for them a room in
the village, and it happened to be over the tavern, and he and his wife retired to
their room and beneath them were emanating the sounds of music and laughter
and joy, and he looked at his wife and said, "You know, if Jesus came to this
village tonight, I think he'd join the crowd at the tavern rather than the crowd at
the church."
And I know that existentially also, because that young man who was in the pulpit
here for those early years of 1960s, oh, it is painful to remember. But, I went to
Williamsburg, Virginia not so long after that and, in a tour of the colonial
buildings, there was this lovely hall on a second floor in the middle of that little
village restored, and the guide spoke about the fact that in this room – which was
light with windows and chair stacked and here and there great barrels of wine
vats, nice hardwood floor – the guide said here the social life of the community
took place. There were often Saturday evening dances, he said, and then the
chairs would be set up for divine worship on Sunday morning. I thought, "Bingo!
The only part of that story I know is Sunday morning, because I've never danced
a step, let alone a two-step, and wine never touched my lips apart from the
Eucharist." I know I am not preaching to many of you. There are a few dinosaurs
like me out there, but just let me get this off my chest. You can just go out of here
and thank God that you didn't know that kind of repressive religious experience,
© Grand Valley State University
�Honestly Human
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
and yet I know I also speak for a good measure of religion which is in control and
which, as Martin Marty says, is afraid to let us experience something of the divine
madness which honors that part of our humanity which is also authentically
human.
Jesus, it seems to me, had the balance right. He was accosted by the religious
guardians of tradition for the fact that his disciples didn't carry on the fast. Maybe
they didn't keep Lent. He said to them, "Look, you can't fast when the
bridegroom is here." And then he was trying to say something new is a-birthing
and you simply cannot take that which is new and cram it into old containers
because it bursts the containers. And then they were going through the grain
fields and the disciples picked the grain for their own need on the Sabbath, which
again brought that conflict situation: why do they do that which is not lawful on
the Sabbath? Jesus said there is precedent for that. The meeting of human need
transcends the ritual prescription for the keeping of the Sabbath. And then he
said, "Look, the Sabbath, this marvelous gift of God, has been for humankind, not
humankind for the Sabbath."
It is so easy in our religious observances, it is so easy for those of us who are in
charge, it is so easy for us to forget that it is all for the enrichment and the
enhancement of your humanity lived before the face of God. With Jesus, there
was that ability to discriminate between the authentic observance and the
honoring of that which was even deeper, which was authentic human need. The
church doesn't live very easily with that kind of freedom because Luke and
Matthew we are told followed Mark a decade or two later. Mark's gospel, that we
read this morning, has that statement of Jesus, the Sabbath was made for the
human, not the human for the Sabbath. When Matthew and Luke picked up that
particular story, in both Matthew and Luke that statement was deleted. I think
the elders got together and said, "You know what? That is just too dangerous. You
can't trust the people to make that decision, and so we had better delete it."
It is a beautiful thing, really, when one can celebrate the full spectrum of being, to
come in here this morning to the sounds of joy. I caught you smiling and tapping
your feet because something deep down in you was being tapped, because there is
something marvelous about the experience of sheer joy and delight. And then, it
will be also a goose-bump experience on Wednesday evening at the opening of
Lent when you will come here to a dimmed sanctuary and kneel and I will place
the ashes on your forehead in the sign of the cross reminding you that dust you
are and to dust you will return.
So, you see, to be honestly human is to be able on Tuesday night to have pancakes
dripping with butter and sloshing with syrup, bacon deep in grease and sausage
that won't quit, raise a glass and party a while, and then come here to identify
with the lamb of God who loved us and gave himself for us. It is not either/or. It
is both/and. That is to be honestly human. That is to be all that God intends us to
© Grand Valley State University
�Honestly Human
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
be, and when we live that way, then I suspect that increasingly with age, with
wrinkles and creases, our visage will reflect joy.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Epiphany VIII
Series
Religion and the Human Story
Scripture Text
Romans 7:14-25, Mark 2:18-28
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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KII-01_RA-0-20030302
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2003-03-02
Title
A name given to the resource
Honestly Human
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on March 2, 2003 entitled "Honestly Human", as part of the series "Religion and the Human Story", on the occasion of Epiphany VIII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Romans 7:14-25, Mark 2:18-28.
Celebration of Life
Nature of Religion
-
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72af847e070f5bbcd1e35993a73e302d
PDF Text
Text
In a World in Peril
From the series: Religion and the Human Story
Isaiah
43:1-‐3;
Matthew
14:22-‐32
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
February
9,
2003
Transcription of the spoken sermon
It is very good to be back here in this place with you. While the time away is
important and was wonderful, it is always good to come back home. I received
some comments as I do annually about coming back after the winter vacation
where I do serious reading and a lot of thinking and reflection. The expectation is
for all of that to result in some stimulating sermons and that puts tremendous
pressures on one. I know that I cannot live up to that expectation.
I was raised and nurtured in a tradition where the sermon is the word of God.
That comes from John Calvin, and Karl Barth made it explicit. The center of it all
is the word made flesh, of course, Jesus Christ, and the word written witnesses to
Christ, and from the text, the spoken sermon is every bit as much the word of
God in the tradition from which I stem. It pains me a bit at this point to have to
admit that I think that is presumptuous. Maybe it is the accumulated years.
Maybe it is a weakening of some facilities, I don't know. But, I recognize that this
moment is a sacred trust and that it is also a human impossibility, if I am, indeed,
to speak the word of God.
I cannot live up to that expectation. And I am acutely aware of the expectations
that drive you out of bed on a cold Sunday morning and get you here to this place.
But, if I cannot live up to that expectation, at least there is this that I can do and
that is simply take this familiar stool and sit in your midst and invite you to think
with me. That is an interactive experience, really. It is a two-way street. I hope
just the fact that I am here on this stool speaks volumes, and your presence in the
pew speaks volumes to me. And so, we launch out once again together in
thoughtful conversation before the face of God.
As I thought about these pre-Lenten weeks, I determined that we would think
together about religion and the human story. We have thought a lot about
religion here for some time. I suppose that is because I select the themes and that
has been very much on my mind. I think about it all the time consciously or
unconsciously, and all the time I am gone, I think about this appointment, this
© Grand Valley State University
�In a World in Peril
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
moment. The thing that seems imperative to me is that we gain an increasing
understanding of religion, the phenomenon of religion, the religious experience,
our faith and our observance, our practice of religion, because it is such a potent
power in life. I have increasingly over the years recognized its power. But, more
recently recognized not only its power for good, but its power for evil. It is a
universal human phenomenon. That is understandable, because we are of all
creatures those who are aware, are conscious. We can reflect upon ourselves. We
are the only animals that know that we will die and we know that those whom we
love will die, and we wonder why and we have the gift of consciousness that
enables us to reflect back upon ourselves and to ask, "What is this human
experience? What does it all mean? From whence has it all issued, and what will
be the issue of it all?" Those are fundamental human questions, if one lives at all
thoughtfully, and hardly anyone escapes being called up short now and again to
say what is it all about. The phenomenon of religion is this universal human
experience of wonder and of sacred worship and ritual and prayer and of
observance in one way or another, and so, caught up in that, its nature and the
human story. That is what I would invite you to reflect with me about a bit today
and in the subsequent weeks.
I crossed a Rubicon not so many years ago. I have crossed a number of Rubicons,
but one of the most significant Rubicons that I crossed was to come to
understand religion as a human construct. That was big for me. That religion, my
religion particularly, didn't fall out of heaven ready-made, that it was not the
consequence of some supernatural revelation that put it all in order, but rather,
that my religion and all religions were this universal human quest for meaning,
for understanding, this universal groping after that mystery which is at the heart
of everything, this yearning for some sense of that abyss of being that fountains
forth and has been concretized in this amazing cosmic journey. When I came to
see that my religion was not the only one, but was one among many, that we are
asking the same questions, looking for the same comfort and security and
understanding, that was a marvelously liberating moment for me.
Don't you remember just a few short years ago when we were called into question
for taking that stand publically? It seemed like it was a radical position at that
time and now it seems like everyone believes it. Isn't it interesting that after the
tragedy of the Columbia that one of the most sensitive follow- ups is the discovery
and the handling of the human remains, because on this particular space shuttle
there were Christians, Protestant and Catholic, there was a Jewish man, there
was a Hindu woman, and perhaps you have read how the various religions have
responded as to how to handle human remains and the respective rituals of
death. Because we are in this together, really. We are trying to understand the
meaning of our life and the meaning of death and then what? Is that all there is,
and how do we respect and reverence human life? So, to come to a point of being
able to look at religion somewhat objectively has for me been one of the most
liberating and illuminating aspects of my whole ministry, not having to be
defensive, not having to prove anyone wrong or to prove myself right.
© Grand Valley State University
�In a World in Peril
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
Someone clipped an interview out of the New York Times for me. It came to me
all the way from Texas, an interview with David Sloane Wilson, a biologist who
has written a book, Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution. Religion and the Nature of
Society. The little note said, "I thought you'd be interested in this," and indeed I
am. Wilson writing as a biologist is putting the evolutionary, empirical method to
an analysis of religion. He was asked at the end of the interview: "Do you believe
in God?"
He said, "I'm a communitarian. No, I suppose I'm an atheist, but I'm a nice
atheist."
Wilson suggests that religion began very early in the history of what could be
called human because religion enabled the clan or the tribe to become cohesive
and to cooperate together and that was a plus, that was of value for their
continuing existence and self-propagation.
The interviewer said, "Well, then, all of the trouble of religion and all of the
divisiveness and the hatred in religion as we see it today, that is an aberration
then, that is just a blip on the radar screen," and Wilson said, "Oh, no. Because
religion that made the 'in' group cohesive also had a tendency to demonize the
other and, therefore, religion has not only had that value of bringing people
together, but it has also a shadow side where it has built barriers between people
and even been a source of violence in the world, which in our world today
certainly we understand."
So, religion is so terribly important and I think it is important for us to think
about our own religious commitment, our own religious faith, our own religious
practice as we try to find orientation in this contemporary scene of which we are a
part. So, I invite you to think with me about religion and the human story, and
today, religion and the human story in a world in peril. That is an
understatement - a world in peril, where there is threat and fear on every side.
Last Thursday evening the evening news was a 30-minute segment. There were
five minutes of news and 25 minutes of commercials, I think, but in that segment
there was the iteration of all of the threats and the trouble in the world. I think
that was the point at which the terror alert had been heightened and the color
changed, notched up. There was the Iraqi situation, and talk of biological warfare
and chemical warfare and nuclear warfare, and there were pictures of police and
military people with machine guns outside of national monuments, and they were
putting barriers around monuments and speaking about the threat to places
where people gather in hotels and hospitals, and so forth. At the end of that news
segment, I was aware of the fact that I had a moment of awareness, and I was
afraid, and I thought to myself, "Dear God, there is something not good about
this."
I felt fear and I don't like to feel fear, and I began to think about what was going
on, and I recognized that we are in a period of time, or we are in a situation where
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Richard A. Rhem
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we are so bombarded and pummeled with all of the news of the world that we
have no ability at all to have a sense of perspective, that we are constantly
brought up to an intensity which disallows us to keep our feet on the ground. As I
experienced that, I thought to myself we have to deal with that. We have to think
together about what all of that is doing to us. As I thought about this moment, I
thought about the religious community generally, and I realized that there is the
road most taken and that is for the religious community to affirm old cliches and
to let these cliches trip off our tongues, thereby reassuring ourselves that God is
in heaven and all is right with the world, finally.
A week ago Saturday in the Grand Rapids Press there was a large feature in the
Religion section on a contemporary megachurch that is growing by leaps and
bounds in Grandville. It is called Mars Hill, and they have 9,000 to 10,000
people on Sunday morning. They were only founded in 1999, about 800 people
coming out of Calvary undenominational church with their blessing and financial
support. They have this outstanding young preacher who is a great communicator
who came into ministry through a rock band and who is able, not only now with
his preaching, but also with a very professional-sounding rock band to really
make that place rock. This tremendous growth and dynamism of the Mars Hill
Church is in itself a phenomenon which many people are talking about. In the
news article there are a couple of paragraphs of analysis. I mention all of this
because if we are going to use our religion as a resource in such a time as this,
there are various ways to do that, and I am using this as an example of the way
most religious communities will respond to it in a rather traditional fashion.
In the article, it said that Mars Hill is among a recent breed of evangelical
churches serving younger people in post-modern America. Having grown up in
an age of relativism, shaken by the trauma of terrorism, many younger Christians
are looking for authenticity, community and spiritual discipline. And how could
they look for anything better than that? But, I continued to read, because I knew
there was another dimension that had to come out, and I read on: "They are eager
to commit to Christian absolutes."
Robert Weber who is an expert on some of these things and has a new book out
about the evangelical church, says that in a few years, churches like this will burst
forth with a new visibility in leadership that will mark the 21st century with a new
kind of evangelical, missional church. I mention this again because I want to say
that is one possible road, and that works. At times like these, there will be many
people who will be fleeing to religion and will be seeking that comfort and
assurance and some antidote against the fear that is so easy to be overwhelmed
with in our day. I mention the Mars Hill phenomenon not at all to be critical, and
certainly not to be envious. I hope God doesn't bless us that much. I'm too old for
that. But, I mention it because of that yearning for absolutes.
At the end of April, we have Charles Kimball coming from Wake Forest
University. He has written a book that is much spoken of these days, When
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Richard A. Rhem
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Religion Becomes Evil. Charles Kimball gives us five warning signs of when a
religion may be getting into trouble, and the first warning sign is absolute truth
claims. That is the road most traveled by the religious community in response to
a world in peril. I cannot take that road. I cannot lead you that way, because I
believe it is the very nature of our historical existence, it is the very nature of
being human that those absolutes are denied us. We are a part of a cosmic drama,
an unfolding drama that reaches back into time that cannot even be conceived,
and is continuing to unfold and develop in ways of which we have not yet
dreamed. In such a situation, the only religious resource that I can offer you is a
reasoned and reflective understanding of what is going on in the world.
I would not deny anyone the emotional high or the emotional support of what a
Mars Hill can offer. But, it is my deep conviction that that is religion as escape
rather than religion as solution. And if religion is to be a solution, then I think we
have to think very carefully together to understand our time and to understand
the resource that our religion provides for us.
Let me suggest two things. Let me suggest, first of all, that we need perspective.
As I said a moment ago, the media drowns us. The media overwhelms us, and
because the media is a corporate venture, because they need advertising dollars,
they need audience, and to get audience, they have to be the first there. They have
to scoop, they have to have the latest analysis, they have to have the most
insightful talking heads, and there is this constant drone, this constant chatter
asking experts to speculate about that which cannot possibly be spoken of
reasonably and responsibly. The moment after the tragedy, we want to know all
about it and we are exposed to that, we are overwhelmed with that, and I think it
is important for us not to let happen to us what happened to me on Thursday
evening, where a 30-minute evening news gripped me with fear. I don't mean for
us to hide our head in the sand. I don't mean for us to be uninformed, but we
have to know that the way we get our information today is like this, it is the blitz
of the media. There is not time for reading, for reflection, for thoughtful
contemplation. We need to step back. We need to take some time. We have to
shut the tube off and go for a walk.
And then, again in terms of perspective, we have to ask ourselves, "Why did 9/11
so disturb us?" Was it not really because we have lived so long in the illusion that
we are impregnable? Scott Peck begins his book, The Road Less Traveled, with
the words "Life is difficult," and I would say that life is perilous and life has
always been perilous. I'm so old, I remember when we were building bomb
shelters and filling them with jars of water and non-perishables. Life is
dangerous. Human existence is perilous. That is not to say that there are not
some new twists and it is not to say that the hatred and the violence today has not
greater potential for disaster because of the means that are at hand. But, I think
one needs a bit of perspective, to recognize that to be human is to be constantly at
peril. And in terms of perspective, I would suggest that we keep in focus the
miracle, and the wonder and the glory and the joy of life.
© Grand Valley State University
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Richard A. Rhem
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Last Friday evening when I returned home there was that gap between the clouds
and the lake, the sun threatening to come through, and it came through in all of
the golden radiance that illumined the landscape, illumined the icebergs, and
then slipped into the sea and sent its glorious gold up into the clouds. At such
times, one knows that one is a part of something that is so much bigger than any
terrorist threat. Then, Nancy and I made our way to Old Boys Brewery for one of
Bob Kleinheksel's gatherings, and there we gathered with Christ Community
types from 80 to 8, and we ate and we drank and our Robin sang like a bird, and I
looked over that crowd and I said, "This is my people. Yes! Yes! This is my
people." I almost think a Friday night in the brewery and a Sunday morning in
the sanctuary would be enough. And then yesterday I saw a beautiful red cardinal
on an evergreen branch tufted with snow, and I knew there was something,
something operative which transcends all of those things that threaten us. A bit of
perspective.
Then, too, one needs a sense of presence. Isaiah 43, "When you go through the
flood, you'll not be overwhelmed. When you go through the fire, you will not be
burned." A beautiful image. Through, not around, not over, not spared the fire,
not spared the flood, but you will go through.
Another image - Jesus walking on the water to the disciples whose little boat is
tossed in the storm. Peter impetuously plunging into the sea in faith, only to sink
in doubt, then to find the extended hand of his Lord. Images. Metaphors.
Metaphors and images that come out of an ancient time when God was in heaven
and in control, when God intervened here and again and rescued here and there.
We know it doesn't work that way. God does not keep towers from tumbling nor
space ships from disintegrating. And yet, those old images point us to that which
is ultimate and infinite which continues to come to expression, and here we are,
human beings who are the emergence of that process, who have learned that love
is stronger than hate, who have learned the possibility of deep joy, who have
experienced the wonder of grace, who know the possibility of forgiveness, and
who find in community that, when we are together, God is in the midst, and when
we have each other, it is enough. And so, dear friends, in light of it all, in a world
in peril, I choose to trust and not be afraid.
© Grand Valley State University
�
Dublin Core
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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audio/mp3
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Event
Epiphany V
Series
Religion and the Human Story
Scripture Text
Isaiah 43:1-3, Matthew 14:22-32
Location
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
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KII-01_RA-0-20030209
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2003-02-09
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In a World in Peril
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Richard A. Rhem
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
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Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
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eng
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Text
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Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on February 9, 2003 entitled "In a World in Peril", as part of the series "Religion and the Human Story", on the occasion of Epiphany V, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Isaiah 43:1-3, Matthew 14:22-32.
Nature of Religion
Quest for Meaning
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9fdb9833f36189fe96eb39dc8ec59522.pdf
94d3025b83b946b010d82d3b02d5ee05
PDF Text
Text
Introduction to Progoff
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
January 30, 1989
Transcription of the spoken lecture
I am giving you the first of three introductory looks at the proposed fall seminar
with Ira Progoff. I wanted to begin now because I want to give you a bit of my
rather slight understanding of Progoff and also to let you know why I was
interested in Progoff in the beginning and why I believe that to bring the Journal
Workshop to this community is the kind of thing that I would like Christ
Community Church to do as a service to the broader community. I am going to
try to stick somewhat to my area and not get into an area which is not at all my
own, namely, the whole field of psychology and specifically depth psychology,
because I know very little about it. But I see in the work of Progoff, in the
knowledge I’ve had of it and of the persons with whom I’ve spoken, the kind of
resource that would be valuable for persons, for many kinds of persons, a broad
spectrum of persons, and therefore I have been rather excited about the
possibility of getting him here.
Getting him here is no small feat, and I guess he does only 4 or 5 Journal
Workshops a year across the country. But, wonder of wonders, the man himself
has agreed to come here this fall. I think to have the presence of someone like Ira
Progoff in itself is significant and very meaningful.
I have divided up what I want to say to you tonight into a few sections. The first
thing I want to say is just a word about who I am, because some of you are from
Christ Community, and some of you are from parts beyond. I want to say that I
understand myself and I understand Christ Community as a kind of purveyor of
this experience. Probably after tonight these kinds of things won't need to be said,
but I want to say them at the outset. I want you to know that I am, first of all, a
Christian person. My faith is in Jesus Christ, and I have found God through
Christ and the grace of God experienced in Jesus Christ. I'm just a simple
believer.
Beyond that, my vocation, my profession, is that of a theologian and a pastor. I
didn't know whether to put pastor first or theologian first, but I learned a little
about my self-understanding because I put theologian first. And that means that I
am a Christian who, in his vocational and professional life, is constantly trying to
understand Christian faith and tradition and Christian existence in the larger
context of the human experience. I'm always trying to do that. I am a pastor; I
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Richard A. Rhem
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have pastoral responsibilities for this community of faith, but I think this
community of faith, as we have postured ourselves, is concerned about the larger
community, the total community beyond our bounds. And so, that's who I am.
You have to know that I am a bridge person, or a boundary person. I always live
"on the edge." I live on the edge of the Church. I almost can't stand to live in the
Church. It's restricting; I get disappointed with it; I get frustrated with it. What
little hair I have left I could tear out at the behavior of the Church, which, I think,
in its institutional form has become rather rigid, has become very defensive, and
has lost the sense of movement with which, of course, it began in the aftermath of
Jesus Christ. It has become an institution with a lot of vested interest and a lot of
structure and harness and all that kind of “stuff” to preserve. I think most of its
posture is characterized by defensiveness and conserving and preserving, rather
than stretching and probing and pushing. So I always live with uneasy
relationship with the Church. I am a boundary person or a bridge person, and, as
I understand myself, I feel it my calling to try to understand the whole spectrum
of human knowledge in the light of the Gospel, and the larger Christian tradition,
but then to attempt to translate that Gospel in the light of that context. So, it's
always a two-way back and forth with me.
I believe that in the scriptures I have a history of Israel and the event of Jesus
Christ which is a given for me. But then the other pole is the present horizon, the
world in which we live. It seems to me that the task of the theologian is to
constantly be living between those two poles: trying to understand that which is
given in the revelation in Israel and in Jesus; and to understand as much as
possible the larger cultural context with its various human disciplines; and then
seeking from that understanding of the larger culture to have questions
addressed to the Gospel, which I believe bring new insights out of the Gospel; but
also bringing the Gospel to bear on our culture so that culture is not absolute but
is always under judgment of the Gospel. So, one must live in that kind of tension.
I think the systematic theologian has the largest task of any thinker, frankly. We
live in a world of great specialization. More and more people know more and
more about less and less. And we know that the academic world is characterized
by a lack of communication, a breakdown of communication and deep
specialization where there is no longer the ability to communicate across
disciplines. But the theologian is the one who claims to speak of God and, if God
is the source and the ground of truth, then to speak of God is to speak of that
whole spectrum, and therefore to be responsible to provide that umbrella that
can bring some kind of unity and coherence to the respective human disciplines.
Now, that's how I understand what I'm about and I love it and am fascinated by
it, and I think that it is important to me as a rooted and committed Christian to
be in that kind of dialogue and conversation with the broader spectrum of human
learning. And then, let me say a word about this particular community of faith.
One of the models by which we have shaped ourselves over the past couple of
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Richard A. Rhem
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decades – one which I enunciated back in 1971, which had come to me in my own
studies and kind of existential quest – was that this community should always
seek to combine intellectual integrity with evangelical passion. The uniting of
head and heart. Intellectual integrity, searching honestly for truth, wherever that
may lead, in the confidence that the source of truth is in God and that God's
revelation in Jesus Christ is an expression of that ultimate truth, and that
therefore any genuine quest for truth cannot be something that will lead away
from but, rather, to God, to the extent that it is an authentic quest. But also with
evangelical passion, for we are not finally on a head trip, but we are engaged in
seeking to bring good news to persons. And we are about human transformation
here. We are about the transformation of the human person, which is more than
communicating a system of doctrines or structure of belief. That is a means;
that's all part of the mix. But, what we really are concerned to do is to see a
human person transformed, moving toward wholeness.
The best model that I can give you for that which we have had some experience
with here, is the AA model, where various steps are set forth which are simply a
borrowing of the Gospel without the names attached, but which lead to the
transformation of persons. And I believe that what we see in the movement of AA
is really what should be happening and happens all too little in the Christian
Church. Through that genuine encounter, that community of support, that total
acceptance and openness, which allows genuine confession and self-exposure in a
healing environment, there does occur the transformation and the healing of the
person. And the healing of the person is to say about the individual what we hope
for the larger picture, and that is the humanization of society. Now, that may
sound very humanistic. But, I happen to think that God is about a very
humanistic thing. I think that God is about gracing persons in order to release
their full potential and to recreate them into the image of Jesus Christ who, I
believe, is the human person par excellence, and that the Kingdom of God is the
rule of God or the reign of God and, where the reign of God is recognized, there
will be a very human society. So, I could speak about the Kingdom of God, but
just to keep it kind of down to earth, let me say once again, the transformation of
the person and the humanization of society - that, I think, is what we must be
about.
And of course, our resources are dynamic; our power, our vision comes out of our
understanding of the God revealed in Jesus Christ, and we do believe, as Scott
Peck says in The Road Less Traveled, that this is a graced universe, and that
there is a grace operative in the world at large which is a healing and positive
movement of God toward this world and toward persons.
So, that's kind of in a nutshell the way we operate here. That's what this
community of faith, this particular congregation, is all about. To the extent that
people have come and the church has prospered, to that extent, anybody that has
come in has kind of bought that vision, and I suppose that I'm guilty of shaping it
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Richard A. Rhem
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in large measure, but that always happens when you get to stand up front once a
week, front and center.
So, we are a Christian congregation, and yet we see, I believe, a broader world out
there. We are not content to live a kind of parochial life of a Christian
congregation, within a Christian tradition, but would seek to understand
ourselves and to relate in a positive way to the broader cultural spectrum, and to
the world of spirit in whatever form that manifests itself.
I happen to believe that we are on the threshold of a new inter-dialogue among
the religions, and I think it is inevitable. The earth has shrunk to the size of a
grapefruit, and we really are members of a global community. It is no longer such
that we have a largely Protestant religion in America, and that you go East to find
Buddhism, and you go to the Middle East to find Islam or whatever. It's all over.
The crosscurrents of religious expression are everywhere, whether you go to Ann
Arbor or Chicago or New York, Los Angeles, you can find it all. Not only can you
find it all, but also you can find all kinds of offbeat brands more and more. The
religious resurgence in our day is one of the remarkable phenomena of this last
quarter of the 20th century. It seems to be incumbent upon us to be in dialogue
with that larger religious scene.
I brought along this little study of Martin Buber, the great Jewish thinker. Martin
Buber is very deeply knowledgeable of Christian faith, thinks very highly of Jesus,
does not understand Jesus as I understand him, but nonetheless really sees a
kind of movement of Messianism as he, as a Jew, understands it coming to
expression in Jesus. But he says, speaking to Christians,
It behooves both you and us to hold inviably fast to our own true faith, that
is, to our own deepest relationship to truth. It behooves both of us to show
a religious respect for the true faith of the other. That is not what is called
tolerance. Our task is not to tolerate each other's waywardness, but to
acknowledge the real relationship in which both stand to the truth.
Whenever we both, Christian and Jew, care more for God Himself than for
images of God, we are united in the feeling that our Father's house is
differently constructed than our human models take it to be.
Now that is a much broader understanding than has been true of Orthodox
Christianity, which would see other religions as expressions of error. It is the
understanding of my mentor, Hendrikus Berkhof, who says that, since the split of
the Jewish and the Christian religions, God has had two peoples, and Berkhof
bases that on his own biblical understanding of the irrevocable covenant that God
has entered into with the Jewish people. That question is debated among
Christian theologians and there is difference of opinion on it.
The point is I think we need to be deeply rooted. Let me say, personally (I don't
want to take you in on this), I need to be deeply rooted in my tradition. I need to
be deeply rooted, deeply committed, and I must bring to the discussion my
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Richard A. Rhem
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deepest and best understanding of Christian faith, and not try to just jot that
down and remove the sharp contours of that in order to make it fit, but only as I
do that as genuinely as I can can I engage in genuine dialogue with someone like
a Martin Buber who will be genuinely Jewish.
Harvey Cox is a theologian who has written a number of books, one of which is
Many Mansions. He's been involved in much of this dialogue among the religions
and it's his feeling that what we need in this inter-religious dialogue is not so
much seeking to find the lowest common denominator, as bringing into the
discussion the sharpest focus of each understanding, so that there can be genuine
meeting and encounter.
Well, let me say that that kind of dialogue I affirm. I'm not afraid of it. I don't
think that our faith is so fragile that we will be tainted. I don't think that. I used to
think that I had to protect my people. I used to think that one of my tasks as a
pastor was to protect my people from error. Now I find that my people are well
able to handle themselves in such areas, and that more often I don't generally
really have to protect them. More often, I have to push them. I don't know if it's
true in most congregations, but it's true in this congregation that I'm always
pushing. I'm always trying to push people into risking and into scary places,
because I believe that is faith-building. I don't think that you need to be
sheltered. And, as a matter of fact, I wonder how long in the world in which we
live anybody can be sheltered anymore. I think it could be less and less possible.
All right. That's a little bit about the posture with which we approach this thing.
Let me say a word about what I see in the horizon of our world. You maybe
didn't ask for all of this, but give me an inch and I'll take an hour. I think we're in
a very interesting period in the world's history. I think that the period in which
we find ourselves is toward the end of a period of tremendous revolution and
transformation in human understanding. And I think that we have moved out of
the settled past of maybe eighteen centuries of unquestioned tradition. And we
are at the end of a couple of centuries of thrashing about, experimentation, of
overthrowing old forms and shaking foundations, but we are not yet at a time in
which new contours are clearly set.
Just, for example, the social-political context. If you would read Hans Küng's
Does God Exist?, you would find him tracing the roots of modern atheism. He
would take you back to the Socialist Revolution in Russia, for example. But,
behind that, you would go to the philosophical writings of the German
philosopher, a Protestant pastor's son, Ludwig Feuerbach, who was the first to
speak of religion as a human product, that religion arises out of the human
person, and that God is the projection of our needs. We have these needs; we
create God; we project God onto the screen of reality; we bow down and worship.
The God we worship is the God we need. We created God. Religion is a human
business.
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Richard A. Rhem
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It was on the heels of Feuerbach that you have Karl Marx in the social-economic
realm. You have Sigmund Freud in the psychoanalytical field, and you have
finally Nietzsche with his nihilism, where he came to the conviction that nothing
is nothing and that there is ultimately nothingness, the abyss. I do think that
nihilism is really the logical conclusion of atheism. If God is not, then finally
nothing is. And you can turn everything upside down and there's no reason
for saying that good is evil or evil is good. You have no norms. It's over.
But, if you see that development, you will also see that those people were dealing
with very real issues in history and society which were manifesting themselves,
and the reaction of the Church was, again, one of fear and defensiveness and
refusal to engage in genuine dialogue with the realities of history that were right
there.
The Marxist theory was constructed on the background of a class society in
Europe and the church leadership was very insensitive and not at all in genuine
dialogue. If you take the actual political-social revolution, the Russian Revolution
particularly, you see that it took on this atheistic form because the Church and
the State were joined together; throne and altar were one. To throw over the
government, to throw over the political and economic system was also to throw
over the Church, because the two were joined where the Church ought never to be
joined. Then the whole social revolution that took place took an atheistic bent,
not because the economic theory demanded it, but because the social situation
meant that those two were wedded and when one went, the other went. And if
you come down to our present day and you see how that revolution has kind of
spent itself, it has not brought in Utopia. In fact, Gorbachev would tell us that the
whole thing is a failure and we can well pray that Gorbachev is successful in what
he is about because he has by economic necessity been forced to see that it is
either change and transform that old giant, or it's not viable.
I think that you put all those things together and it is not just business as usual,
but there are some very long-term movements and forces and tides within history
which have created a kind of openness and possibility today, which just haven't
been here in a long time. I think that this is a rather interesting time and it has
peril and it has opportunity. And it's not just some result of an immediate
situation, but I think the gathering of long-term things that have been going on
for a couple of hundred years. The Enlightenment on the European continent, the
Age of Reason which was the continuation of the Renaissance (the Reformation
period was kind of an interruption of that flow), but the whole coming to the
devotion of the human person, of the human mind, of reason, and of throwing off
of authorities of all sorts: Church, Bible, whatever. The authoritarian day is past.
We haven't learned that much in the Church yet. But Authoritarianism is over. In
the world at large I really believe Authoritarianism is over. So that is the socialpolitical context.
Take the scientific world. If you read Steven Hawking, this brilliant English
Quantum physicist, in A Brief History of Time and Space, you find that we live
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on what is the threshold of that discovery of what they call the Theory of
Everything, the theory for which Einstein was questing – that little formula that
would reveal the ultimate core of reality and develop it. In the Christian Science
Monitor of some time ago there was a series, Making the Quantum Leap: A FivePart Series, a fantastic series written in newspaper format, Christian Science
newspaper format, so it's still a little hefty. But even I can almost understand
some of it and it is amazing. I, in my next incarnation, hope to be either a
conductor of a symphony or a physicist. I've always been fascinated by the close
tie between physics and theology. Now, I regret to say that generally the
breakthroughs in physics have been registered in theology rather than the other
way. I'd like to get that reversed some day, but that probably won't ever happen.
But Newton was a Christian thinker, a physicist. And he did his best to maintain
his Christian faith alongside his understanding of the physical universe. But his
system, his understanding of the cosmos actually left no room for God. No, Sir
Isaac never gave up on God, and I'm sure that God never gave up on Sir Isaac.
But, as a matter of fact, the ordered universe of Newtonian physics had no room
for God; it had no room for prayer; it had no room for miracle or any of that.
Now, the amazing thing is that Newtonian physics has been blown sky high.
And Quantum Physics, the understanding of the structure of reality, whether in
its cosmological expanse or in the understanding of the tiniest little molecule and
atom, neuron and electron, speaks of eruption, of the eruption of the new, the
possibility of randomness. It's an open ball game. Einstein hated it. Einstein
hated it! He fought the Quantum Physicist Neils Bohr. Einstein said, "God doesn't
play dice with the universe." He didn't want any randomness. But, nonetheless,
that's where we are today, and it's impressive when you do see a person on the
moon or when a satellite brings a picture from around the world, or your
computer chip does everything you ever wanted done.
The world of religion, the resurgence of fundamentalism in various forms. I read
a statement by Charles Colson the other day. In his new book, Kingdoms in
Conflict, he says, "Not since the Crusades have religious passions and prejudices
posed such a worldwide threat." That's the world we live in today. I think he's
right. Not since the Crusades. If not through a religious zealot or confused idealist
whose finger is on the nuclear trigger, then certainly by destroying the tolerance
and trust essential for maintaining peace and concord among people.
Martin Marty, in a discussion of the aggressiveness and the orneriness of religion
in the world in its manifestation, raised the question, "Is it not possible to be both
civil and committed?" Is it not possible to be both civil and committed? Now, you
see, that is kind of a trick, to be both civil and committed. But too often
commitment has resulted in fanaticism and has wrought all kinds of havoc in the
history of the world. And too often civility has been the result of lack of any real
commitment or passion. To hold those two together is so important.
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Well, that's the world we live in and it is a wonderful fascinating world in which
to be alive. I think that it is a world that has openings for those of us who are
concerned about spiritual reality and human transformation like never before.
Now, let me get more specific with Progoff. Why? What has all this to do with Ira
Progoff? Well, I don't know a great deal about Ira Progoff. But I have heard him
on tape, I've read some of his works and I was first put on to him by a couple of
very respected friends in ministry some years ago, and I know that he has had
wide acceptance in the Catholic church, more so than in the Protestant Church.
But a couple of my friends in the Reformed Church have been part of some of his
activity and have spoken very highly of him.
Ira Progoff is of Jewish origin. He is perhaps best characterized as a JudeoChristian-Buddho spiritual sage. He has milked all of these traditions for
insights, which he has put together with his understanding of depth psychology.
Now, I really am not going to say very much about depth psychology because,
well, I'm going to say everything I know, but that's not very much. I know that
Progoff – having been a student of Carl Jung, Jung having been a student of
Freud but breaking away from Freud – is one who created in his understanding
room again for God, but not a God "out there," which incidentally isn't even in
vogue in the best theology today, but a God in the depths of the unconscious
where there is a kind of meeting of all kinds of consciousness down in some deep
reservoir in the depth of reality.
A depth psychologist believes that the consciousness of the person is the tip of the
iceberg. And I think that that has been rather well documented in terms of the
tremendous structure of the unconscious. And I think images do evolve out of an
unconscious depth. But I don't know much about that. Anyway, that is Progoff's
orientation. He is a spiritual person. He's a deeply spiritual person. He's a
mystical person, in the line of the mystics, I would say. If you want to label him in
terms of Protestant or Jewish theology, he's probably closest to Paul Tillich, a
Christian theologian now dead, and to Martin Buber, whose famous I and Thou
book has made such a great impact in our century.
How Progoff speaks of religion – as I utilize Progoff's understanding of religion –
it is a functional understanding of religion. He is dealing with the function that
religion performs in human life and human society. It is more a question of
functionality than it is a question of truth. Progoff would not want to referee
between the truth claims of Eastern religions or Judaism or Islam or Christianity.
But, he would see in them all a kind of commonality of function, and I believe
that it is perfectly legitimate to look at it that way. Now, that's not all I'm
concerned about, because finally I think that the truth question will obtrude
itself. It certainly will for me. And I am always struggling with the truth question
in Christian faith, in religious expression. But, nonetheless, there can be a very
positive and helpful understanding of the place of religion in the function it
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performs in the person and in society as a whole. And when Progoff speaks about
religion and the religions, he is speaking functionally.
He would see its function as enabling persons to position themselves in
relationship to the transpersonal reality in order that they may experience
guidance and structuring for their outer life. Religion ought to help me to
position myself over against reality that is beyond myself in order that in my
everyday life and living I may have guidance, orientation, to be at home with
myself and at home with the world. Now, if religion does that for a person, it has
done a great, great deal. Progoff would see the various religions as particular
forms and structures, all of which are performing that kind of common function:
to enable me to live as a human being, with other human beings, to enable me to
live as a person over against transpersonal reality.
Sometimes when he speaks, I think of the AA program where you have a Higher
Power. I have encountered, from time to time, a few Christian people who have
been uneasy with that, as though to speak of the Higher Power is to deny either
the uniqueness of Jesus Christ or the God we see in Jesus Christ. Now, it doesn't
bother me at all. I had an old gentleman in here one day coming off the AA
program and, so help me, a man in his 60s who had absolutely no conception of
God. I had a yellow pad like this and I had a pen, you know, and I'm generally
nervous and I was making signs and I was trying to kind of speak about God and
him down here and I put a big cross between as kind of a bridge and I made this
silly diagram and we talked together and he said, "Somebody said, well, the
Higher Power: just visualize a telephone pole." Well, I made this little thing and
we talked some more and when it was all over I was quite moved as he said to me,
rather moved himself, "May I take that with me?" And I thought to myself, what
hunger. You can call that God or you can put whatever face you want to on it and
I don't think Progoff will argue with you. He will say, "Is it helping you to live
well?"
Now, I do think it is valid for us to take whatever resources we have to help
people to live well. So, Progoff is kind of a mystic who believes that there is a huge
cosmic process that has been about, which is evolving. He reminds me somewhat
of the French Catholic thinker, Teilhard de Chardin, whose works, of course, the
Vatican banned, but then the best things that come from Catholics get banned for
a while. But, de Chardin is an original thinker who sees kind of the Omega point
off there and he sees this whole cosmic process evolving toward that point. And
Progoff believes that it is in the likes of us, in our individual spirits, that Spirit
comes to expression, and that Reality enters the world – it emerges, as it were,
out of the depths – through the individual spirit of a person. His concern is that
we enable persons to become, to be the bearers of Spirit and the expression of
Spirit, and that, as Spirit is able to flow through our spirit and come to some
kind of tangible form, Reality actually enlarges itself and the whole process
continues to go on.
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He sees a crisis in the present time because he believes that traditional patterns,
beliefs, doctrines and rituals have lost their grip on people, or people have lost
their grip on traditional symbols and forms. Symbols and forms, be they doctrinal
formulation, sacramental acts, or whatever, can function to put us in touch with
the transpersonal as long as we believe in them. When we don’t believe in them,
they can't do it for us anymore. Now, when you stand in Western Michigan with
all of our churches and with a large Christian community and in a rather
conservative part of the world, it may sound a bit apocalyptic to speak about
secular culture and about people uprooted, cut off from their roots. But, we have
to keep reminding ourselves that this is not all there is, and when he speaks
perhaps with more of a world purview and he speaks out of the context of New
York City and Los Angeles, he probably feels that and senses that more than we
do. Nonetheless, we have to recognize that the world as a whole is not becoming
– now speaking as a Christian and an advocate of the Christian Gospel – the
world as a whole is not becoming more, but is becoming less Christian. We are
becoming a minority. And it is a fact that those traditional patterns and beliefs
and rituals have for large portions of the world population lost their power. But,
the need still remains for that which will put the individual and the larger society
in touch with the transperson, or with God, if you will. And so, the need in our
day is to find the way in which that can happen.
Now, being a depth psychologist, Progoff believes that we will find that truth by
going into the depth dimension, and that God (I'll say God), is perceived, the
knowledge of God is accessible, not through rational formulation, but through
intuitive perception, that it comes not by rational instruction which has been the
hallmark of Reformed tradition, but that it comes through apprehension,
through images, and symbols, that it erupts, that it is not mastered rationally
and discovered.
Now, you know, I have to say, just coming as I have through the season of
Epiphany, I have found myself wrestling with that question week after week.
When you really get some insight, when you really have a "high" experience,
when you really capture something, when there's been a breakthrough for you,
how do you express it? Isn't it, "Suddenly it dawned upon me?" Isn’t it often after
a churning and wrestling and in a moment of insight, and doesn't it often come to
us whole? As I was wrestling with this whole matter of how God reveals God's
self, I was so aware of the fact that it is one thing to say that the light's on; it's
another thing to say, "I see the light." So that we can talk all we want to in
theological and doctrinal terms about the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, about
the light shining and all that, but when Progoff speaks about going into the depth
dimension, I have to say that there is something to the fact that God's unveiling of
God's self will happen within us. It must finally be a subjective apprehension, no
matter how much we may clamor for the fact that it is objective and real. You
know, we often equate objectivity with the real. Oh yes, it's certainly real. But
until I believe it, until it grasps me and I say, "Wow," it has not really come full
cycle.
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And so, Progoff’s point for a community such as ours – this is what he would
think:
In a crisis of a culture that has lost its moorings, whose symbols have
largely become empty symbols, he would say, first of all, the church should
give social support to the person, enabling that person to work on his or
her own inner life. If in our day our young people are being told, "Just say
no," Progoff says to the Church, "Just say yes." When there's someone,
some funny person in the congregation, a little odd, a little strange, doesn't
fit the stereotype, talks about the inner journey, why he says, "Just say
yes." Encourage them. Be a place that encourages people to get on with
that work on the inner life.
He says, secondly, let the Church be the social institution and the culture
where work on the inner life can take place. And I like the word he uses
here: "Let the church be a sanctuary where that can happen." You know,
we really ought to be about that, and we really ought to get on with it. I
think about that every Sunday when I see the large assemblage of people,
and then I realize how superficial is my little touch. When they leave for
the rest of the week, what's happening? Are we as a community creating a
sanctuary where people can do more than come in on Sunday morning and
at worst complete the Sunday obligation, at best get a little Sunday
morning high, and hopefully in it all, worship God?
Thirdly, he says, let the Church provide the means and the program
whereby this can be encouraged. And I guess that bringing a seminar like
this here would be a tangible, concrete means by which to expose and offer
to people ways in which to do that.
He remarks about the fact that youth, many of the younger generation, have
taken over Eastern religions lock, stock and barrel. You know, it's faddish, it's
trendy, and those waves happen. It does indicate, however, a real spiritual hunger
and a search and a quest. And he also says, "Look, our generation cannot really
successfully just go back lock, stock and barrel and pick this thing up. I mean, the
new and the different is fascinating, and we understand all that dynamic, but he
says it's not for them to go back and get ancient Buddhist meditation techniques,
but the challenge to us is to find the ways in which they can be put in touch with
God, with the transpersonal reality, in the garments of the 20th century. Find
the methodology. Find the modes, the means by which this can happen, which I
think is the same kind of thing which I said earlier tonight when I said I felt it was
incumbent upon me to translate the Gospel into today's idiom, because that
needs constant translation so that it always comes to expression in the
conceptuality and the language of the particular context in which it is being
proclaimed. Otherwise, it is simply the reiteration of formulas out of the past and
that's fundamentalism – just the literal reiteration of formulas out of the past is
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fundamentalism. You don't think about that. You just give obeisance to formulas,
slogans, models, and then you're not really in touch.
So, in his book The Dynamics of Hope, Progoff deals at quite some length with
the experience of Tolstoy who went through a period of tremendous anguish in
his life after being very successful. He was on top of the world socially, culturally,
a great literary success, and he came to a time of a sense of the meaninglessness
of it all. And he tells in some detail Tolstoy's experience and he speaks in The
Dynamics of Hope, of the Utopian person, and that is the person who has this
kind of prophetic sense, who is willing to anguish and struggle, but always in
hope, and out of the anguish and the struggle eventuates the new realm of
experience and insight, which is the prelude to another struggle and anguish,
which eventuates in a new breakthrough, because he sees our human experience
as being an ongoing pilgrimage and process and, for creativity to be released,
there is a need for this constant movement between the struggle and anxiety and
always, however, with the hope undergirding it and breaking through to a new
plateau and a new discovery. Let me just read a couple of paragraphs.
"I began to understand,” Tolstoy reports, “that in the answers given by
faith was to be found the deepest source of human wisdom. That I had no
reasonable right to reject them on the ground of reason, and that these
principle answers alone solve the problems of life. I understood them, but
that did not make it any easier for me.” The fact, in other words, that his
reason was now giving assent to an act of faith of some sort, did not bring
such an act of faith any closer. It did not even make it any more possible.
All that this new intellectual realization achieved, in fact, was to intensify
the internal pressure and to build up an even greater tension around the
vacuum of meaning which he felt in himself. How could he find a faith that
he would not merely be in favor of believing? But one that he would
actually be able to feel as a reality? It would be good if he could accept
some structured body of doctrine that had been worked out in generations
past by an established church. That would not be a fact for him. He would
not feel the reality of such a faith. And so, no matter how much he might
try to convince himself rationally that he ought to place his faith there, the
persistent question about the validity of life would not be silenced.
But, he goes on and he struggles and then he tells about the dream that Tolstoy
had and the peace and the resolution that he came to. I'm not going to do more
with that, but this is a very fine introduction to Progoff’s understanding of the
journey of the individual, and it is his conviction that it is necessary for an
individual to feel his life story and to be able to have a sense of continuity
through the various stages and that in the creative unfoldment of a life there
will be those periods of dark and light.
I was thinking about his understanding of the human experience in contrast to,
for example, someone within the Reformed Church. I shouldn't even say that
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because it's not Reformed, but there is this friend of mine who I know rather well
and who probably most of you would know, as well, Bob Schuller and the Hour of
Power. Bob Schuller with his possibility thinking, which was built on Norman
Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking, has done a tremendous amount
for many, many people. He has recognized the importance of self-esteem and he
has brought a positive and hopeful accent, and many people who didn't believe
that they had it in them have found that, after all, they had it in them. My
problem with Schuller is that I feel that sometimes he almost becomes shrill and I
want to say to him sometimes that success isn't always the consequence of
faithfulness or responsibility or effort, and so I always felt that there was
something lacking. There was a depth dimension in the Gospel, if you will, that I
felt never came to expression with Bob Schuller's formulations. I thought to
myself, interestingly, how much closer Progoff is to an understanding of human
personality and the experience of darkness and light, of guilt and forgiveness, of
bondage and freedom. And then, really, not just a once for all thing, although we
believe in a great once for all transformation, but as the ongoing unfoldment of
life, this constant swinging between the poles.
I can understand that in terms of my understanding – my biblical orientation.
Walter Brueggemann in an excellent study of the Psalms speaks about how you
can categorize the Psalms as Psalms of Orientation where creation is good, God's
in his heaven, all's right with the world, everything's ducky; Psalms of
Disorientation, where nothing is right and everything's unraveling; and then
there are Psalms of New Orientation. Brueggemann's point is that life is not
often lived in only orientation or disorientation. Life is generally lived moving
from orientation, disorientation and new orientation, and out of the study of the
Psalms you have that same kind of expression. Our life is a dynamic movement,
and we do move through periods of openness, joy and light; we do move through
valleys and through arid periods and dry periods; and it seems to me that is more
true to human experience as I understand it than in some of the pop psychology
and what I think is kind of a vulgarized psychology taken over by some of the
religious stuff that is on the market.
Finally, in his book The Symbolic and the Real, Progoff has, toward the end of the
book, that which really spoke to me and what turned me on in the first place to
his thinking and his whole approach to things. Let me just read you a couple of
paragraphs here. His point, again – I said this earlier and I'm going to say this
once again – his point is that to be in touch with reality or to be in touch with God
is not the consequence of coming to the end of a well-constructed syllogism. It is
the intuition that comes with the apprehension of symbol and image; it is a
moment of illumination; it's revelation. So he says:
As the symbol unfolds, reality enters the world and becomes present. A
new atmosphere is established, and this is much more than a new climate
of thought. It is reality increasing its presence among humankind by
means of symbolic events that are enacted upon the depth dimension of
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the psyche. In another style of language, this type of event is often
described as a breakthrough of spirit, into human experience. It has,
indeed, all of the traditional attributes of spirit, for it possesses power and
meaning and the healing quality of inward peace. It expresses itself,
however, not in the fixed forms of dogma, but in the living fluidity of
symbolic acts. (p. 214)
And then he speaks about revelation in the Old Testament:
One context in which this new perspective is especially important is our
attitude toward the Bible. In the biblical tradition there has been the view
that when the Old Testament was finished and was certified in its standard
version, that was the end of God's appearance to man. After that, man was
not to expect a breakthrough of spirit in the world. At least not until the
coming of the Messiah. All that was required of people then was that they
keep the formulas and the stories so that they would keep alive the
remembrance of the great moments of contact with the Divine which had
taken place in history and were now restricted to the past. The traditional
understanding was that since the voice of God stopped speaking when the
Old Testament was closed, it would be best if people stopped listening for
the voice of God in the world and concentrated on fulfilling the
commandments.
When the experiences recorded in the New Testament transpired, this
view was reconsidered and was opened anew. Then it was felt that God
had indeed made a new entry into the world. Necessarily so, since He had
needed to make a new covenant between Himself and man. With the
ending of the experiences in the New Testament, however, the same
tendency to restrain the human spirit and enclose it in fixed molds
recurred. Again, it was believed that the spirit of God would no longer
enter the world in a prophetic breakthrough. It would not because it was
no longer felt to be necessary. The Truth had been given. After that it
would be sufficient if people would imitate Christ and concentrate on
entering the dimension of the sacred by repeating the festive formulas
accrued by ecclesiastical authorities. (pp. 222-223)
And then he says,
One of the very greatest and most basic difficulties of Western history is
expressed in this fact that we have drawn from our traditions of belief that
major openings of the Spirit are not possible any longer because they
stopped when the Bible was officially sealed. We need to become capable
of reopening the Bible as a living contact side by side with other styles of
experience and sources of the spirit in the modern psyche. The two
testaments which comprise the Bible are openings. They surely were not
intended to be closings in man’s relation to the infinite. (p. 224)
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I think he's right. I think a great problem with the Church is the fact that, in order
to manage the revelation given, it was historically necessary to close the canon. It
was a historical necessity. But then, to refuse to understand that the Spirit of God
continues to speak was to allow the Church to become rigid and to allow a
conception of orthodoxy. And I must say to you, this is my confession, one that I
close with, that to me the idea of orthodoxy is an arrogant presumption. That's
probably why I'm a heretic.
Now, I think from my perspective, my understanding of things, there's richness
here and that it is a great resource. I will be participating with my own labels,
with the God reflected in the face of Jesus. I will understand this in terms of my
own theological understanding. But I see the possibility of a very fruitful
instrument here which again I think holds great promise for the healing of
persons and, through the healing of persons, the humanization of society, which I
think is what we're all about.
Now, I think I've talked sufficiently long so that you should be sufficiently tired,
so you probably wouldn't even want to raise a question. But, if you would, I would
be happy to take it.
Frank: I agree you're a heretic. I think you're making heretics out of all of us, but
I think I'm beginning to enjoy it. When you sent that first letter about Ira Progoff
I immediately rose up in my traditional background and sent you a letter back
saying you probably were off base, and that we couldn't tolerate this new kind of
thinking. But, I guess it just exemplifies the fact that most of us are completely
uneducated. For forty years I have been studying anatomy and physiology and
biochemistry and medicine, pharmacology, thinking that all of medical science
depended on how much I — I suddenly realize how much an uneducated
nincompoop I am and I sure appreciate your bringing these things into the open
so that we could all learn from them and get carried along with your enthusiasm.
RAR: Well, thank you, Frank. I want to say that the questions, the concerns you
raised were very legitimate concerns. Frank. I was really comforted to find
explicitly Progoff recognizing the dangers of that kind of trendy movement, of the
sensitivity movements and groups, and those things of the 60s or 70s where
people were undressed and then left defenseless, and he definitely set himself
over against that kind of thing. And the legitimacy of his Journal Workshop has
been tested. He's kind of a quiet person; he shuns the idea of guru. Doesn't even
want to be called a sage. He's a very humble pilgrim who is sort of feeling his way
along. But, your concerns were very, very well taken, and I was almost positive
immediately that that's not where he was, but I was happy to find it confirmed,
that he also distanced himself from that kind of thing. So, I appreciate the
concerns you raised.
I read today the Seminary Times of last fall, a book by James Ashbrook, whom I
do not know. He's a seminary professor. He was at Colgate Rochester; he's moved
since then. Making Sense of God. And it is a book entitled Brain and Belief where
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for a couple decades he has done serious research on the brain, as a theologian,
trying to find the relationship of the function of the brain to spiritual perception.
It is an absolutely fascinating article. And there is a rather serious critique of it, as
well, in which, you know, it's such a pioneering kind of thing that the guy says, "I
don't know how to critique it." But it's just fascinating. In fact, I'm going to give it
to you to take home with you and you can tell me about it when I get back from
vacation. But you know there are such interesting things happening today and
there is an openness today. I think across the board: to structure of reality, to
what we mean when we say God, and I do think that it is an exciting time in
which to be alive. It's a perilous time, too, because people are also falling for all
kinds of... someone accused me of being New Age. Now, I've never read anything
New Age. I don't know what New Age is. But, I know this - that anytime that
there is a genuine breakthrough and movement, there are going to be all kinds of
counterfeits and all kinds of peripheral things going on and there will be faddy,
trendy things. That's true. But, nonetheless, that shouldn't scare us.
Ira Progoff. The Dynamics of Hope: Perspectives of Process in Anxiety and
Creativity, Imagery and Dreams. Dialogue House Library, 1985.
Ira Progoff. The Symbolic and the Real: A New Psychological Approach To The
Fuller Experience of Personal Existence. Peter Smith Publisher, Inc., 1983.
© Grand Valley State University
�
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Richard A. Rhem Collection
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Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
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Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
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Interfaith worship
Sermons
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Rhem, Richard A.
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
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Kaufman Interfaith Institute
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English
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KII-01
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1981-2014
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Midweek Lecture
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Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Ira Progoff, The Dynamics of Hope: Perspective of Process in Anxiety & Creativity, Imagery and Dreams, 1985, Ira Progoff, The Symbolic and the Real: A New Psychological Approach to the Fuller Experience of Personal Existence, 1983
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RA-3-19890130
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1989-01-30
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Introduction to Dr. Ira Progoff
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Richard A. Rhem
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eng
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Talk created, delivered, or published by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on January 30, 1989 entitled "Introduction to Dr. Ira Progoff", on the occasion of Midweek Lecture, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Tags: Progoff, Transformation, Hope, Spiritual Journey, Symbol, Emergence, Insight, Spirit, Interfaith, Consciousness, Nature of Religion, Community of Faith, Global Community,Revelation, Nature of Religion, Psychology . Scripture references: Ira Progoff, The Dynamics of Hope: Perspective of Process in Anxiety & Creativity, Imagery and Dreams, 1985, Ira Progoff, The Symbolic and the Real: A New Psychological Approach to the Fuller Experience of Personal Existence, 1983.
Format
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application/pdf
Community of Faith
Consciousness
Emergence
Global Community
Hope
Insight
Interfaith
Nature of Religion
Progoff
Psychology
Revelation
Spirit
Spiritual Journey
Symbol
Transformation
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1007ab87214d3a4b8978ca2520db88fe.pdf
e3511f546e3243f70b11cb76dc36aec4
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Text
Is Christianity Dying?
From the series: Tough Questions; No Easy Answers
Scripture: Habakkuk 1:1-5; 3:17-19; Luke 3:1-9; 19:37-38
Richard A. Rhem
Christ Community Church
Spring Lake, Michigan
August 10, 1997
Transcription of the spoken sermon
Is Christianity dying? That is a tough question and there is no easy answer. Let
me acknowledge at the outset that no one can answer that question with
certainty.
Is Christianity in trouble? Yes.
If that is challenged by pointing out that it is in trouble in Europe and the West in
general, but flourishing in Africa and some other regions, I would respond by
saying that the same secularizing tendencies and advance of scientific knowledge
that have put it in peril in the West will have to be dealt with wherever the
Church extends itself.
I suspect Christianity as an institutionalized religion is dying in the form in which
we have known it. But, perhaps the question, "Is Christianity Dying?’ is not the
best way to formulate the question. It would be better to ask as does Charles
Davis in the book he entitled What Is Living, What Is Dead in Christianity
Today? And I even prefer a further sharpening of the question: "What can
Christianity become for us?"
That is a crucial question and that is the really critical matter: What can this 200year-old religious tradition, through which and in which we have been formed,
become for us?
To become a significant shaper of our lives and an ongoing, dynamic faith
tradition, Christianity must undergo a major creative transformation. Continuing
on its present course in fundamentalist form, or even in strongly orthodox or
timidly mainline expression, Christianity will not continue.
Let’s probe this question and as we do, I will do as I have been driven to do
throughout this series - I will focus on the phenomenon of religion because,
obviously, Christianity is a religion and to examine it, we must be clear about the
nature of religion.
© Grand Valley State University
�Is Christianity Dying?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 2
Lest you forget, I say again; religion is a construct of the human mind. We create
religions as human beings.
A religion is a humanly constructed symbol system that provides an orientation
for our lives, supplying us with a map for negotiating life’s passages, offering us
an interpretation of culture, history, human action and the transcendent Mystery
of our existence.
Feuerbach in the 19th century saw religion as a human invention arising out of the
human situation of need and threat. In Feuerbach’s understanding, God was
simply a human projection of one’s own idealized self.
We have recognized the genius of Feuerbach’s analysis of religion, but we have
demurred at one critical point; we have claimed that the creation of religion on
the part of humankind is the consequence of a prior address from beyond or from
our depths, an address that puts us in question, that calls forth our response in
the form of religious faith, devotion and practice.
Religious faith or awe or wonder or fear is response to an experience of some
Reality. Charles Davis writes,
The reality experienced in faith does not manifest itself as an object. It
reveals itself as the term of a feeling response but remains hidden from us
or unknown inasmuch as it does not appear to consciousness as an
apprehensible object. ... feelings rest upon a oneness between the subject
and what is felt.... Feelings are responses springing from what we are.
They are responses of our being to reality as we meet it. Our feeling
responses depend upon what we have become as beings, what we are as
persons. Feelings are the resonance of reality upon human subjects, the
arousal of our personal being through union with a reality present to us. In
the case of religious feeling, the response of our spiritual effectivity to
transcendent reality precedes knowledge and continues without any direct
knowledge of a kind that would make the term of that response a known
object. The reality that draws us where our own being falls off into
nothingness, the reality that gives a sense of basic fulfillment at the center
of our emptiness, remains outside our intellectual grasp. (pp. 9-10)
Feuerbach’s claim that religion is a merely human activity with no referent
beyond the human subject remains an unproven and unprovable assertion. The
same is true for the claim I make that faith is response to that which encounters
us, to the Mystery that meets us, but can never be grasped because it remains
hidden.
This is the watershed; the great Divide. But the claims are beyond verification;
each of us must decide if we believe we are addressed by Someone, Something
beyond us, or, conjuring up a fiction.
© Grand Valley State University
�Is Christianity Dying?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 3
To conclude the latter is the end of religion as a viable, meaningful human
activity; to conclude the former sees the variety of religions and religious beliefs
and practices as modes of response to a Reality beyond us, although present to
us. And that is our claim.
That being the case, we can see Christianity as a human creation in response to
the Mystery as manifested in Jesus of Nazareth.
In sum: we affirm the Mystery we term God and we affirm the nature of that
Mystery as defined in Jesus, the concrete, human, historical expression of the
Mystery.
Well, perhaps you breathe a sigh of relief; Christianity is then a genuine article, a
faith response to the Mystery of Reality, to God. And that is true enough, except it
is not the only religious response to the Mystery; religion is a universal
phenomenon of humankind. Are we prepared to say that our response in the
Christian tradition is the only response that reveals the Mystery and mediates a
saving, healing communion?
That’s one question; but there is a second: Has the tradition faithfully and
adequately responded in light of the ongoing drama of creation and human
development?
Let’s deal with the second question first and let us be reminded of the temptation
to which all religion in institutional form is subject, the temptation to freeze a
given form and absolutize it, denying the dynamic movement of history and
human development, and thus denying the imperative that the religious symbol
system remain open to re-symbolization, to fresh expression and new forms.
I chose the scripture lessons with this tendency of religious institutions to
absolutize themselves in mind.
A late seventh century B.C.E. prophet in Judah surveyed the moral and spiritual
life of his people and found it wanting. Habakkuk, in the prophetic book that
bears his name, cries out to the God of Israel,
O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
and you will not listen?
Or cry to you, "Violence!"
and you will not save?
In a word, the prophet cries out to God to do something to turn the nation from
its spiritual decay. The writing goes on to record the Lord’s response - the work
becomes a dialogue between God and the prophet. God’s response:
© Grand Valley State University
�Is Christianity Dying?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 4
... a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were
told.
We learn that Judah is indeed in for judgment and that to be inflicted by the great
and growing power of Babylon. Thus Habakkuk has his answer: God is doing
something, but now the prophet has a larger problem. How can the God of Israel
utilize a pagan power to bring judgment on God’s chosen people? Judah had
strayed from God’s ways and the prophet sought God’s movement to judge and
through judgment bring grace. But Babylon or, as they are called in the text, the
Chaldeans? No way! That was too much. Israel was God’s chosen; Judah was
God’s special people. Habakkuk simply could not conceive of God raising up a
foreign power against God’s own.
That attitude was always present in the tradition of Israel and always challenged
by Israel’s own prophetic voice. It is such an attitude that was attached by John
the Baptism who called the Jewish people to repentance on the banks of the
Jordan River outside Jerusalem.
It was the first century C.E., a time of apocalyptic expectations, a time of great
ferment and expectation of some dramatic in-breaking of God ringing down the
curtain of history. John the Baptist, like Habakkuk before him, was a fiery
preacher of judgment calling God’s people to repent and prepare to meet their
God.
But the party line of the religious establishment resented such radical preaching
and the exposing of their spiritual and moral apathy. Were they not God’s elect,
immune to God’s purging action? No, claims John the Baptist.
Do not begin to say to yourselves, "We have Abraham as our ancestor;"
for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to
Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees... Luke 3:8-9
Jesus, too, ran headlong into the religious establishment, the guardians of the
institutional forms and traditions of Israel. Luke tells us of the Palm Sunday
procession to Jerusalem. The disciples are praising God with joy and no doubt
displaying a festive holiday spirit. The Pharisees tell Jesus to make them cease
their celebration, to which Jesus responds,
... if these were silent, the stones would shout out.
And Luke tells us, Jesus came over the crest of the hill and saw Jerusalem in full
view and he wept. He wept for what he saw as the inevitable horror that would
befall the city because of the mind-set, the spiritual blindness he had encountered
in the Temple establishment, which was also the center of political power.
© Grand Valley State University
�Is Christianity Dying?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 5
If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for
peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. ... you did not recognize
the time of your visitation from God. ...Luke 19:41-44
What is my point?
Simply this: Religion is a human construction in response to an address from
beyond, an encounter with the Mystery of Reality that becomes present in the
consciousness of humankind. All religious response is not the same, offering
equal clarity or illumination, resulting in equal fruitfulness in human lives. Some
responses are the result of penetrating insight, the Gift of the Spirit. Some have
less of beauty and elevating capacity, but no religion is absolute; none is without
human limitation and distortion. And none is absolutely essential for the
unfolding of the Mystery of the cosmic drama.
Let me expand on that for a moment. I raise the question, "Is Christianity
Dying?" in this message. I would never have conceived of such a question when I
arrived here in 1960, nor when I returned in 1971. To contemplate the demise of
Christianity would have been beyond the boundaries of my thinking. Jesus was
God’s supreme and last word; Christianity the one true religion, the result not of
human construction, but totally of God’s revealing. History was moving toward
an End at which point Jesus Christ would appear on earth and bring in the
Kingdom of God.
It never occurred to me that such simplistic thinking was one more instance of
Habakkuk’s horror at the thought of Babylon breaking Judah, or John’s
opponents who said, "Hey, we have Abraham as our father," or the religious
establishment who refused God’s visitation in Jesus.
Neither was I at all aware of the uncritical arrogance of such a position;
o
The arrogance of assuming God’s ways were synonymous with the
human religious response of my tradition;
o
The arrogance of assuming no other human religious response
could be the consequence of a genuine encounter with God;
o
The arrogance of assuming God’s ultimate purposes could not be
accomplished apart from my religious system.
It just never occurred to me. In spite of the prophetic core of the Hebrew
Scriptures and the ministry of Jesus in his own conflict with the established
religious structure, I failed to see that I had made an idol of my own tradition and
absolutized it, as though God had created it rather than recognizing it as a human
creation of response.
© Grand Valley State University
�Is Christianity Dying?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 6
That it is a human response, a human construct does not mean that it is not
response to authentic encounter, that the encounter has not yielded genuine
insight into the nature of the Mystery as gracious, nor that the structured
response does not mediate healing grace. All of that, I believe, is true of our
Christian faith tradition; all of that has indeed been the fruit of Christianity.
But, it is not the only tradition; it is not alone the true glimpse of the Truth.
Earlier I raised two questions: Has Christianity faithfully and adequately
responded to the Light of the ongoing drama of Creation and human
development, and is it the only response that is genuine response to the Mystery?
To the second question, I answer "No." To the first "Yes" and "No." Yes,
Christianity has been a faithful response mediating true insight and grace, but
"No," in the sense that it has become frozen, absolutized itself and failed to
continue to remain open to new knowledge requiring new symbols bearing fresh
understanding of the Mystery that is God, the cosmic process, the meaning of
human existence and the wonder of it all.
Unless Christianity undergoes creative transformation, it will die. In a recent
interview in The Christian Century, a Yale professor of the philosophy of religion
speaks of the failure of Christianity any longer to provide the integration of all
other elements of life. Louis Dupré contends,
... religion must in some way integrate the profane and the sacred.
Obviously, Christianity no longer plays an integrating role in the life of
modern societies. Certainly for most people in the West, especially in
Western Europe, it has lost its creative, formative power. Christianity has
become simply one element of civilization among many others, and by no
means the most important. In the past religious integration was handed
down by a tradition. But that tradition itself has lost its authority in the
eyes of our contemporaries, including most believers. (July 16-23, 1997, p.
655)
Dupré sketches a historical perspective much as we have been attempting in this
series. Why, he was asked, is it especially difficult to be Christian in our time? To
that question, he responds,
Culture as a whole has become secular in a way that it has never been
before. One may plausibly argue that the 18th century was the first nonChristian century. Most leading thinkers and artists, even if they were not
opposed to Christianity, ceased to take their inspiration from it:
secularization became dominant. Still, even at that time, Western culture
was so penetrated by Christian values and ideas that one might mistake
entire passages of Voltaire or Diderot as having been written by believing
Christians. Eighteenth-century culture was still steeped in a tradition that
had been Christian since its beginning, and it was extremely difficult for
these thinkers to free themselves from a language saturated with religion.
© Grand Valley State University
�Is Christianity Dying?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 7
The 19th century was different. It was an epoch marked by a virulent
antitheistic campaign to clean the culture slate of all Christian traces. Yet
these attacks were the work of an elite; culture at large retained distinct
remnants of its Christian roots.
Even today ties still exist between Christianity and culture in Europe and
more so in the U.S.. But on a more fundamental level, the West appears to
have said its definitive farewell to a Christian culture. Little of the old
hostility remains. Our secular colleagues are happy to recognize the debt
our civilization owes to the Christian faith to the extent that the faith,
having been absorbed by culture itself, has become simply another cultural
artifact. Christianity has become an historical factor subservient to a
secular culture rather than functioning as the creative power it once was.
The new attitude of benign atheism was, I think, prepared in the late 19th
and early 20th centuries by the three most prominent secularizers of the
time, Marx, Freud and Nietzche.
The interviewer then asks:
Why single them out? How did they differ from the earlier atheists you
mention?
For Marx, Freud and Nietzche, the idea of forcibly eradicating religion had
become unnecessary. Religion for them was a passing symptom that was
rapidly vanishing by itself. Already Marx had moved beyond the idea of
atheism as a mere assertion of the unreality of God. For Marx,
concentrating on atheism distracts us from the positive task of liberating
humanity from social oppression. Lenin’s active atheism, in which he used
the state to try to destroy religion, is actually a fallback to earlier attitudes
about religion. Freud admitted that no one can be forced not to believe.
But as rational thought shows nothing in favor of religion and everything
against it, to persist in a faith because no argument can decisively refute it
is for Freud the sign of a lazy mind. Nietzche preached a spiritual gospel, a
new religion without God, beyond Christianity and atheism, that could still
learn much from the old faiths.
Moving further in that direction, contemporary secular culture, especially
in its communications media, shows a surprising openness toward
religion. But little suggests that this interest surpasses the purely
horizontal cultural level. Culture itself has become the real religion of our
time, and it has absorbed all other religion as a subordinate part of itself. It
even offers some of the emotional benefits of religion, without exacting the
high price faith demands. We have all become atheists, not in the hostile,
antireligious sense of an earlier age, but in the sense that God no longer
matters absolutely in our closed world, if God matters at all.
© Grand Valley State University
�Is Christianity Dying?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 8
Further along in the interview, Dupré suggested what I believe will be essential if
Christianity is to be renewed and find new and vital expression. He had spoken of
the necessity of individual spiritual renewal and then the statement was made,
Your view of the spiritual life seems to encourage interfaith encounter.
He responded,
In our age we have come to understand our faith within the context of the
aspirations, desires and needs expressed in so many forms since the
beginning of the human race. We have learned to respect these many ways
of humankind’s longing for God in the light of our own faith. Some
Christians have been inspired to integrate pious attitudes and meditative
practices derived from other faiths within their own, without betraying
Christianity’s unique identity. In doing so they are following ancient
examples. Christians have received so much from the Hebrew mother faith
of which they are no longer aware. Also from the fourth century on, Greek
fathers generously borrowed Neoplatonic speculation to an extent that, via
Gregory of Nyssa, Dionysius and Maximum Confessor, late Greek piety has
shaped the very nature of Christian mysticism. Why should we then not be
allowed, as even the desert fathers were, to borrow meditative exercises
that centuries of pre-Christian practice have left us?
In fact, here also the analogy of faith urges us to see the existence of other
religions in the light of God’s providence. Buddhist silence may help the
Christian in deepening insight into the mystery of the Trinity where the
Father is the silent source of the eternal Word. And how could God’s
omnipresence in Vedantic Hinduism not remind the Christian of the
Spirit, qui replevit orbem terrarum—who fills the entire world? Such
analogies cannot be fortuitous to the Christian mind, and we do well to
heed them as signs of a divine Providence that, with loving care, rules not
only Christians but all humans.
It would be wrong, however, to regard these analogies as justifying a
syncretistic relativism that entitles each person to compose his or her own
religious collage. This attitude, all too common today, shows a lack of
respect not only for one’s own faith but also for those faiths one so casually
dismantles for spare parts. It is yet another manifestation of that radical
anthropocentrism, the main enemy of sincere religion, that tempts
believers to bring the language of transcendence down to the level of
purely human wants and choice. Without detracting from the providential
nature of other faiths, Christians cannot ignore the fact that this same
Providence has led them to a faith that is not a "choice" but, for those
chosen to it, an absolute summons. To relativize faith is, I think, to subvert
its fundamentally divine character.
Here I think Dupré points to that which we have begun to experience -
© Grand Valley State University
�Is Christianity Dying?
Richard A. Rhem
Page 9
that encounter with other genuine faith traditions not only leads us to a
new respect for the breadth of response to the Mystery in the broad
spectrum of religious traditions, but also deepens us in our own faith
tradition and enhances our own spiritual experience, enriching it and
authenticating it as indeed revelatory and the mediator of grace.
What we are recognizing is the distinction between faith as response to the
address of God, the Mystery of our existence, and the structure of beliefs that
are formulated in response to that revelatory encounter. Such a formulation of
beliefs is the human construction of a religious tradition. The encounter is
initiated from the other side. Religion is the consequence, a human activity of
reflection and the attempt to give some shape to the experience of the Mystery. In
the words of Charles Davis,
The absoluteness of faith is the absoluteness of total demand and total
response in an experience of unrestricted love in relation to hidden
transcendence or mystery. Faith is the drive toward transcendence, the
thrust of human beings out of and beyond themselves, out of and beyond
all the limited orders and human certainties under which they live, in an
attempt to open themselves to the totality of existence and reach unlimited
reality and ultimate value. It is a total response to the felt reality of a total
demand. That absoluteness of faith should not be confused with a
certitude of belief. (p. 67)
Faith, Davis points out, gives assurance of a lived relationship, not absolute
intellectual certitude. The human construction of religion takes the form of
concepts and propositions. These cannot give absolute certitude; they are human
constructs, not to be identified with the Divine. They are pointers, gropings,
partial, limited, in a word - human.
As David claims,
Faith has a paradoxical character. It is a presence that is at the same time
an absence, because no positive experience can lay hold of the
transcendent. At the heart of faith is a negative experience, an experience
that seems like a non-experience, because it is the breakdown of every
finite experience, of all our concepts, images and feelings. Faith follows a
narrow path between idolatry on the one side and nihilism on the other.
Much religion is idolatrous inasmuch as it absolutizes some finite
experience or expression. When faith is not idolatrous, it is difficult to
distinguish from nihilism, because the presence it mediates is as
transcendence, an absence on the human level, its plentitude is a void or
emptiness of finite reality and meaning, its love co-exists with a sense of
abandonment. What distinguishes the negative experience of faith from
the unfaith of nihilism is precisely the refusal of closure, the willingness to
accept a world without boundaries, even though on the cognitive level that
© Grand Valley State University
�Is Christianity Dying?
Richard A. Rhem
Page10
demands the surrender of a stable truth, a fixed center, a final meaning of
our religious texts and of our human existence. (p. 76)
Is Christianity dying?
In its present form, unless it undergoes creative transformation, "Yes."
But, God is not dead; the Mystery continues to breathe through the whole cosmic
process, enlivening all that exists, beckoning us toward fuller spiritual life. And
the concretization of the Mystery in the humanness of Jesus, in which our faith
tradition finds its center, still challenges us to humane existence lived in the
Presence of God.
This is the amazing possibility to which this incredible moment in our life
together calls us; this is the opportunity of a lifetime. We are cut loose, set free,
not to separate ourselves from our spiritual heritage, but to open ourselves to a
whole new appreciation of the encounter from beyond ourselves, calling us
beyond every limited understanding and formulation to wonders not yet dreamed
of.
Thus, Christianity will not die, but live, transformed, standing in continuity with
the heritage of faith we have entered into, continuing to provide us with insight,
meaning and confident assurance.
Its authentication will be its capacity to connect with our ongoing human
experience. No longer will authoritarian claims, whether of tradition, Church, or
Bible, be submitted to. That is not to deny the reality of divine revelation; it is
simply to recognize in Davis’ words, that
The appeal to revelation belongs to a culture in which the important truths
concerning human life and society are handed down by teachers having
authority and are proclaimed for acceptance as sacred.
Such a culture no longer exists for us. Post Enlightenment, the appeal is rather to
critical rationality and that presupposes an open community of discourse in
which all the members participate in seeking knowledge and in which any claim
to acceptance must rest upon evidence and argumentation open to scrutiny and
criticism by all.
Biblical criticism will not be reversed. We simply know, as Davis declares,
The typical biblical book does not come down to us all of a piece from
some acknowledged prophetic figure or divine messenger, but as the
documentary sediment of the history of a people, with originating factors
too complex for disentanglement with more than changing probability.
This has changed our understanding of the authority of a biblical text. It is
© Grand Valley State University
�Is Christianity Dying?
Richard A. Rhem
Page11
not that of an oracle from on high but that of an expression of the religious
identity of a particular people. (p. 110)
Nevertheless, what we find in the Bible are paradigms of faith, expressions of the
total response of persons and a community of persons whose experience of
having been addressed elicits the absoluteness of trust in the Mystery of grace.
Habakkuk found himself in turmoil over the ways of God; his parochialism was
shattered; he did not pretend to understand. But his encounter with the Holy One
of Israel issued in that beautiful expression of trust with which his writing
concludes. In a word, he says, "Strip me of everything, let disaster come;
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will exult in the God of my salvation. God,
the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and
makes me tread upon the heights.
Such trust is absolute, even when life is confusing and answers to our questions
evade us.
Such trust is enough in life, in death.
References:
Charles Davis, Interview, The Christian Century, July 16-23, 1997, p. 655f).
© Grand Valley State University
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/db1c0b8c4e1d51a10971cd4c559cc50d.mp3
08823404cd64b316f074b5e2c0838f97
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Richard A. Rhem Collection
Description
An account of the resource
Text and sound recordings of the sermons, prayers, services, and articles of Richard Rhem, pastor emeritus of Christ Community Church in Spring Lake, Michigan, where he served for 37 years. Starting in the mid 1980's, Rhem began to question some of the traditional Christian dogma that he had been espousing from the pulpit. That questioning was a first step in a long and interesting spiritual journey, one that he openly shared with his congregation. His journey is important, in part because it is reflective of the questioning, the yearnings, and the gradual revision of beliefs that many persons in this part of the century have experienced and continue to experience. It is important also because of the affirming and inclusive way his questioning was done and his thinking evolved. His sermons and other written and spoken materials together document the steps in his journey as it took a turn in 1985, yet continued to revolve around the framework and liturgies of the Christian calendar.
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Religion
Interfaith worship
Sermons
Sound Recordings
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Rhem, Richard A.
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/514">Richard A. Rhem papers (KII-01)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Kaufman Interfaith Institute
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Language
A language of the resource
English
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Sound
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1981-2014
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
text/pdf
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Event
Pentecost XII
Series
Tough Questions: No Easy Answers
Scripture Text
Habakkuk 1:1-5, 3:17-19, Luke 3:1-9, 19:37-38
Location
The location of the interview
Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI
References
Charles Davis, Interview, The Christian Century, July 16-23, 1997, p. 655f.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
KII-01_RA-0-19970810
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1997-08-10
Title
A name given to the resource
Is Christianity Dying?
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Richard A. Rhem
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Clergy--Michigan
Reformed Church in America
Christ Community Church (Spring Lake, Mich.)
Sermons
Relation
A related resource
Richard A. Rhem - An Archive of Sermons, Prayers, Talks and Stories: http://richardrhem.org/
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
audio/mp3
application/pdf
Description
An account of the resource
A sermon given by Richard A. Rhem (Dick) on August 10, 1997 entitled "Is Christianity Dying?", as part of the series "Tough Questions: No Easy Answers", on the occasion of Pentecost XII, at Christ Community Church, Spring Lake, MI. Scripture references: Habakkuk 1:1-5, 3:17-19, Luke 3:1-9, 19:37-38.
Mystery
Nature of Religion
Pluralism
Religion as a Human Construct